Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/86

* VENUS. 60 VENUSBERG. from the sea-foam -which gathered about the mutilated member of Uranus. The new divinity landed on Cyprus, attended by nymphs and tri- tons. Under her feet flowers sprang to birtJi, and all nature rejoiced. Other legends told of her love for the mortal Anchises, to whom she liore ./Eneas, and of her amour with Ares, which was detected and punished by Hephipstus, her hus- band. It should be said that there are many indications of a union of Ares and Aphrodite in cult, and in some places we hear of an Aphrodite Areia, Aphrodite Nicephoros (Bringer of Vic- tory), and armed statues of Aphrodite, though anything warlike is utterly removed from the ordinary conception. In general Aphrodite ap- pears as the goddess of sexual love, the inspirer of passion, and the enemy of chastity, although the cult had a better side in which she was hon- ored as a goddess of married life and chaste love, as at Sparta and near Athens. Plato and later writers sought to distinguish these two sides as the worsliip of the Aphrodite Urania (heavenly leve) and Aplirodite Pandemus, but the distinc- tion will not hold. Aphrodite also appears as a goddess of vegetation, especially of flowers. And this side appears in the festival connected vith Adonis ( q.v. ), who, according to an eastern legend, was a youthful favorite of the goddess. From the east, too, seems to have come her wor- ship in many towns, especially on the coast, as a goddess of sailors, who gives them fair weather and prosperous voyages. This seems merely a borrowing from the honor paid their great god- dess by Phtenieian sailors. In art we find at a very early date primitive images of the eastern goddess, sometimes draped, but frequently nude, in the classical art the goddess was regularly clothed until the time of Praxiteles, whose fa- mous Cnidian statue first represented her as nude. This type became very popular later and developed into such works as the Capitoline and Medicean statues. A clothed type is seen in the so-called Venus Genetrix of the Louvre, which probably is derived from the famous .plirodite in the Garden of Alcamenes. Another famous statue was the Aphrodite Epitragia (riding on a he goat) of Scopas in Elis, known to us only from its appearance on coins. In Rome Venus seems to have been originally a goddess of vegetation, especially of fruit and flow'ers, brought to Rome at an early date from Ardea. where she was a prominent divinity of the Latin league. Her name does not appear in the early calendars, but she was early identified with a very different goddess, Libitina, whose name was now connected with litbido (lust). Later, the identification with Aphrodite was completely carried out by the introduction into Rome of the worsliip of Venus Erycina, from the great sanctuary on Mount Kryx in Sicily. Sulla especially honored Venus Felix as a god- dess of good fortune, and her worship liecnme prominent in his colony at Pompeii. Pompey built a temple to Venus Victrix. and a great in- crease in the honor of this goddess developed with the Empire, since the Julian family traced their descent to .Ascanius. son of Eneas, and grandson of Aphrodite. In n.r. 4Ci .Tulius Cirsar dedicated a temple to Venus Genetrix in his new Forup), and her worship was connected with that of Mars, father of Romulus, in Augustas's tem- ple of Mars Ultor, and with that of Roma ia Hadrian's temple of Venus and Rome. VENUS. A planet whose orbit is between tho,se of the earth and Mercury. Her mean dis- tance from the sun is 67,200,000 miles. The eccentricity of her orbit is smaller than that of any other planet, being only 0.07 ; and therefore her greatest and least distance from the sun dif- fer by only about 9-tO,000 miles. She performs her sidereal revolution in 224.7 days, in an orbit whose plane is inclined 3° 23%' to that of the ecliptic, but her synodical revolution requires nuich more time, 584 days. Between inferior conjunctions and the next superior conjunction Venus is a morning star, and between superior conjunctions and the next inferior conjunction she is an evening star. Her diameter is about 7700 miles; so that her volume is about 0.92 of that of the earth, and her mass is nearly 0.82 of that of the earth. In the telescope Venua presents phases similar to those of our moon, varying from a mere sickle of light to a complete circle. The brilliancy of the planet is at times very great, rendering her visible easily in day- light. The maxinunn brightness occurs thirty- six days on either side of inferior conjunction, the condition of maximum depending on the planet's phase and proximity to the earth. The rotation period is still much in doubt, for the surface markings are inconspicuous, and it is only by showing these markings that we can fix the period. Some astronomers (Schiaparelli and Powell) think the period is one of 225 days, the same as the orbital period, and that Venus, like our moon, always turns the same side toward the centre of the orbit. Other astronomers fix the period as approximately equal to that of the earth, namely, 24 hours. Venus proljably has some sort of an atmosphere, but no satellites are known. See Transit of Venu.s; Planets; So- lar System. VENUS AND ADO'NIS. An early love poem in stanzas of six lines, by Shakespeare, licensed and published in 1593, but probably written as early as 1.589. It was dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and in the dedication is described by the author as the "first heir of my invention." The poem is marred by its licentious tone and by youthful faults of execution. VENUSBERG, va'niis-berK (Ger., mountain of Venus). A name given as early as 1337 (in the Children of Limhurg) and often afterwards to mountains in Swabia, ebsewhere in Germany, and even in Italy. Here Venus w-as sup- posed to hold court, not inaccessible to favoted mortals, who led with her a life of delight at the risk of eternal danniation. To warn them Eck- hart sat at the entrance and. according to some legends, the torments of some visitants had al- ready begun and their lamentations might on occasion be heard. This legend results from superimposing Christianity on German mytho- logic belief in the Earth-]Tother. known with various attributes as Hel, Hilda. Hulda, and Berchta. To her attendant train of elves, wise wnpic!! (now become ^^■i1ches). and fallen heroes. Christian superstitiiui added unbapti/ed infants. The tale was further modified by the needs of the homilist into an allegory against several of the deadly sins. The first mortal visitor to the