VENUS in AUGUSTAN ROME by John Carney a Thesis Submitted To
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VENUS IN AUGUSTAN ROME by John Carney A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Wilkes Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences with a Concentration in History Wilkes Honors College ofFloridaAtlantic University Jupiter, Florida May2013 VENUS IN AUGUSTAN ROME by John Carney This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Christopher Strain, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor ofArts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Date ii ABSTRACT Author: John Carney Title: Venus In Augustan Rome Institution: Wilkes Honors College ofFloridaAtlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Christopher Strain Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences Concentration: History Year: 2013 This thesis examines the development of a goddess in the ancient Mediterranean. Popularly worshipped since at least the Paleolithic era, this goddess served as the cultural forbear of various goddesses throughout the region. The dominant religious culture of both the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras was emphatically matriarchal and contemporaneous societies mirrored this religious attitude with matrilineal customs. Over the course of many millennia, the goddess' identity and roles developed in different ways across the Mediterranean region. When Augustus came to power in Rome in the first century B.C.E., he adopted the tradition of his family and professed descent from Venus to lend divine credence to his claim to power. With the help of the poet Vergil, Augustus manipulated the character of Venus to embody and reinforce female roles desired in his burgeoning empire. iii DEDICATION For Jeanette and Jeffrey, who should feel obliged to read this thesis. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction ......................................................•. 6 II. Chapter One The Cultural History ofVenus ......................................... 7 Paleolithic Progenitor ............................................ 7 Neolithic Variegation ........................................... 10 Astarte ....................................................... 14 Indo-European Invasion ......................................... is Turan ...........................................•............ 17 Aphrodite .................................................... 20 Venus ........................................................ 23 III. Chapter Two Becoming Augustus: Octavius the Boy Learns to Marshall Power .......... 26 IV. Chapter Three The Virtue ofVergil's Venus ........................................ 37 Aeneas ....................................................... 38 The Aeneid ..................................................... 39 Publius Vergilius Maro: Poet or Propagandist? ....................... 45 V. Conclusion . ..................................................... 53 Bibliography ........................................................ 55 v I. Introduction In times before writing, the earliest ancestress of Venus was worshipped more widely and commonly than any other deity. However, this ancestress was far different from the Roman Venus of the first century B.C.E. Venus first appeared in Rome in.the third century B.C.E., but she was not revered as mater matriae until the Caesars Julius and Augustus manipulated her image in their campaigns for political dominance in the first century B.C.E. The apex of this transformation occurred when Augustus pursued conscious and concerted efforts to reform the image ofVenus, as well as the morals of Rome, especially concerning women, marriage, and childbirth. Through his patronage of the greatest literary minds of his time, Augustus helped to create an image of Venus that was extremely important and influential to imperial Romans. Augustus commissioned Vergil to produce a laudatory, heroic epic - the Aeneid. In the Aeneid, Vergil cast Venus as caring, compassionate, and submissive. This role starkly contrasts the role classically attributed to Venus' Greek counterpart, Aphrodite. 6 D. The Cultural Hjstoey ofVenus The starting point for a history of the culturnl transmission of the goddess Venus is unfortunately opaque; the farther back in history one attempts to inspect, the more sources become ambiguous, incomplete, and unavailable. However, the cultural forbear of Venus appeared as early as the Paleolithic period as an ultimate and archetypal f Goddess widely worshipped across the Eurasian continent. The ch~acter of this early goddess was quite distinct from the Venus that the Romans would come to worship as their progenitor and protectress, but this was the goddess from which Venus was spawned. • Paleolithic Proe;enitor Paleolithic sources are primarily simple artifacts and archaeological sites and materials. It is from these that posterity has any remaining notions regarding the era. This fragmentary evidence also comprises the first record of goddess worship, as well as evidence for the worshipped Goddess herself. According to David Leeming and Jake Page in their analysis of feminine deities: The Goddess archetype took form in our consciousness at a point in preliterate prehistory that is too distant for us to remember or even imagine with any great certainty. From her depiction in Upper Paleolithic (30,000-7000 B.C.E.) figurines, cave paintings, and other archeological material, especially in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, however, scholars have surmised certain things about her. 1 1 David Leeming and Jake Page, Goddess: Myths ofthe Female Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 7. 7 Reliance upon these items as evidence is a result of necessity; no trace of written language exists and oral tniditions were largely eradicated by later militaristic societies. Thus, there are no literary or mythical accounts of the Goddess from the time of her earliest religious domination. There are, however, many contemporaneous visual depictions of women and the Goddess, as Leeming and Page attest: "The great majority of objects found by archaeologists within the Paleolithic caves are figurines and drawings of women, some clearly pregnant, nearly all with caricatured large breasts and buttocks (like the famous Earth Mothers or Venuses ofLaussel and Lespugue), and disks and other objects with vulva slits.'02 These 'Earth Mother' figurines have been commonly associated with fertility and sexuality because of their enhanced sexual organs and historical interpretations of the symbolism behind their enhancements. The actual symbolism of these representations, and thus the Goddess herself, is more complicated than the aforementioned view suggests. In The Living Goddess, Marija Gimbutas argues that the roles which this Goddess fulfilled were quite broad: The Old European cultures certainly cared about fertility. But[... ] the wide variety of figurines, and particularly their Neolithic archaeological contexts, suggests that the feminine force played a wider religious role. The many sophisticated Neolithic art forms accentuating the female body unveil a natural and sacred sexuality neglected by modem culture.3 This Paleolithic Goddess was thus not a simple analogue for the Roman Venus, but something much more multifaceted. 2 Leeming and Page, Goddess, 8. 3 Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddess (University of California Press, 2001 ), 5. 8 The roles which the Goddess fulfilled in the Paleolithic period were much more diverse than those oflater 'love goddesses,' like Venus. The focus on specific elements of the body in the Goddess' corporeal depictions seems to belie this fact, but, "In religious art, the human body symbolizes myriad functions beyond the sexual, especially the procreative, nurturing, and life enhancing.[ ... ] Renditions ofthe body expressed other functions, specifically the nourishing and procreative aspects of the female body."4 It then follows that these depictions should not be read as evidence of the Goddess as solely a fertility or a love goddess. She was in fact both of those, and more: "[She] personified every phase of life, death, and regeneration. She was the Creator from whom all life - human, plant, and animal - arose, and to whom everything returned. Her role extended far beyond eroticism."5 The Goddess from whom Venus claims cultural descent has similarly been described by Leeming and Page as a supreme and ultimate deity: In spite of the murkiness of our sources, a portrait of Goddess in her early stages does emerge from the evidence- at least in silhouette. [... ]Goddess was thoroughly female; she preceded any differentiation into God and Goddess. She seems to have been absolute and parthenogenetic - born of herself- the foundation of all being. She was the All-Giving and the All-Taking, the source of life and death and regeneration. More than a mother goddess or fertility goddess, she appears to have been earth and nature itself, an immense organic, ecological, and conscious whole - one with which we humans would eventually lose touch. 6 However, the Goddess' reign as supreme deity did not last. Although she remained the primary goddess for many societies, the tides of change were already beginning to rise: "During the Late Upper Paleolithic (1 0,000-7000 B.C.E. ), climatic changes brought the 4 Gimbutas, The Living Goddess, 5. 5 Ibid, 5. 6 Leeming and Page, Goddess, 7. 9 ice age to an end, and people in what are now Europe and the Middle