Venus

Roman An ancient goddess originally of springtime, crop cultivation, and gardens. By the end of the third century b.c., the Romans had given Venus the characteristics of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and Venus became the goddess of love and beauty. The name Venus means desire, charm, and grace in Latin, though the name is much older than the Roman civilization. In some accounts, Venus was the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, who was a Nymph. Venus became the wife of Vulcan and the mother of Cupid. According to the Roman poet Virgil, Venus was also the mother of the hero Aeneas. Though scholars believe that people in Italy worshiped Venus long before the Greek influence arrived, one story says that Aeneas brought her cult with him when he arrived there after fleeing Troy. The Romans regarded Venus as one of the founders of their people. Julius Caesar, who ruled Rome from 49 to 44 b.c., and Augustus, who became emperor in 27 b.c., both considered her their patroness and guardian. Many artists chose this goddess of beauty as their subject. The Venus de Milo, now in the Louvre museum in Paris, is one of the most famous statues in the world. It was sculpted in the second or first century b.c. and was found on the island of Melos in a.d. 1820. The 15th-century Italian painter known as Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) portrayed her as rising from the sea and standing on a half scallop shell in Birth of Venus, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Venus is the name of the second planet from the Sun in the solar system. It is the brightest object to appear in the night sky, shining as either the morning star or the evening star, depending on the season and the planet's position relative to Earth. Early Greeks and Romans believed they saw two different planets until Pythagoras (c. 500 b.c.), a Greek philosopher and mathematician who settled in Italy, demonstrated that they were the same object.