[1][2] Derivatives include venustus ('attractive, charming'), venustās ('charm, grace'), venerius ('of Venus, erotic'), venerāre ('to adore, revere, honor, venerate, worship'), and venerātiō ('adoration').

[1] Venus is also cognate with Latin venia ('favour, permission') and vēnor ('to hunt') through to common PIE root *wenh₁- ('to strive for, wish for, desire, love').

[1][3] Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon",[5]: 146  and "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".

[5]: 13–64 [7] The ambivalence of her persuasive functions has been perceived in the relationship of the root *wenos- with its Latin derivative venenum ('poison'; from *wenes-no 'love drink' or 'addicting'),[8] in the sense of "a charm, magic philtre".

Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way.

[17] Macrobius's Saturnalia describes a statue of Venus in Cyprus, bearded, with male genitalia but in female attire and figure (see also Aphroditus).

[24][25] In some traditions, Titus Tatius was responsible for the introduction of lawful marriage to Rome, and Venus-Cloacina promoted, protected and purified sexual intercourse between married couples.

Most copies of its Venus image would have been supported by dolphins, and worn diadems and carved veils, inferring her birth from sea-foam, and a consequent identity as Queen of the Sea, and patron of sailors and navigation.

A form of Venus usually identified as Venus Felix was adopted by the dictator Sulla to legitimise his victories over his domestic and foreign opponents during Rome's late Republican civil and foreign wars; Rives finds it very unlikely that Sulla would have imposed this humiliating connection on unwilling or conquered domestic territories once allied to Samnium, such as Pompei.

A separate cult to Venus Erycina as a fertility deity,[50] was established in 181 BC, in a traditionally plebeian district just outside Rome's sacred boundary, near the Colline Gate.

[29]: 199–200 Vitruvius recommends that any new temple to Venus be sited according to rules laid down by the Etruscan haruspices, and built "near to the gate" of the city, where it would be less likely to contaminate "the matrons and youth with the influence of lust".

Her sacred month was April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) which Roman etymologists understood to derive from aperire, "to open", with reference to the springtime blossoming of trees and flowers.

Venus Verticordia was invented in 220 BC, in response to advice from a Sibylline oracle during Rome's Punic Wars,[p] when a series of prodigies was taken to signify divine displeasure at sexual offenses among Romans of every category and class, including several men and three Vestal Virgins.

[11]: 105–09  The statue of Venus Verticordia was dedicated by a young woman, chosen as the most pudica (sexually pure) in Rome by a committee of Roman matrons.

[60] She was meant to persuade Romans of both sexes and every class, whether married or unmarried, to cherish the traditional sexual proprieties and morality known to please the gods and benefit the State.

At this festival, men and women alike drank the new vintage of ordinary, non-sacral wine (pressed at the previous year's vinalia rustica) in honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with this gift.

Upper-class women gathered at Venus's Capitoline temple, where a libation of the previous year's vintage, sacred to Jupiter, was poured into a nearby ditch.

[62] Common girls (vulgares puellae) and prostitutes gathered at Venus' temple just outside the Colline gate, where they offered her myrtle, mint, and rushes concealed in rose-bunches and asked her for "beauty and popular favour", and to be made "charming and witty".

Varro insists that the day was sacred to Jupiter, whose control of the weather governed the ripening of the grapes; but the sacrificial victim, a female lamb (agna), may be evidence that it once belonged to Venus alone.

At the same time, he was pontifex maximus and Rome's senior magistrate; the festival is thought to mark the unprecedented promotion of a personal, family cult to one of the Roman state.

[w] Virgil, in compliment to his patron Augustus and the gens Julia, embellished an existing connection between Venus, whom Julius Caesar had adopted as his protectress, and the Trojan prince Aeneas, refugee from Troy's destruction and eventual ancestor of the Roman people.

[68] Cupid (lust or desire) and Amor (affectionate love) are taken to be different names for the same Roman love-god, the son of Venus, fathered by Mercury, Vulcan or Mars.

[69] Childlike or boyish winged figures who accompany Venus, whether singly, in pairs or more, have been variously identified as Amores, Cupids, Erotes or forms of Greek Eros.

From at least the 5th century BC he also had the form of an adolescent or pre-adolescent male, at Elis (on the Peloponnese) and elsewhere in Greece, acquiring wings, bow and arrows, and divine parents in the love-goddess Aphrodite and the war-god Ares.

When Aeneas rejects her love, and covertly leaves Carthage to fulfill his destiny as ancestor of the Roman people, Dido is said to invoke Anteros as "contrary to Cupid".

Images of Venus Pescatrice tend to be more playful, usually found in less formal and less public "non-reception" areas: here, she usually holds a fishing rod, and sits amidst landscape scenery, accompanied by at least one cupid.

They include roses, which were offered in Venus' Porta Collina rites,[aa] and above all, myrtle (Latin myrtus), which was cultivated for its white, sweetly scented flowers, aromatic, evergreen leaves and its various medical-magical properties.

As goddess of love and sex, Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights, so myrtle and roses were used in bridal bouquets.

Examples include: Venus is remembered in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361–62.

Although the name of the actual deity is not known, the knowing contrast between the obese and fertile cult figures and the classical conception of Venus has raised resistance to the terminology.