Venus is a Roman goddess whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
Jupiter, also known as Jove, is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religion and mythology. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as offering, or sacrifice.
Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was more often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins. Their virginity was deemed essential to Rome's survival; if found guilty of inchastity, they were buried or entombed alive. As Vesta was considered a guardian of the Roman people, her festival, the Vestalia, was regarded as one of the most important Roman holidays. During the Vestalia privileged matrons walked barefoot through the city to the temple, where they presented food-offerings. Such was Vesta's importance to Roman religion that following the rise of Christianity, hers was one of the last non-Christian cults still active, until it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391.
Bona Dea was a goddess in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility among married Roman women, healing, and the protection of the state and people of Rome. According to Roman literary sources, she was brought from Magna Graecia at some time during the early or middle Republic, and was given her own state cult on the Aventine Hill.
In ancient Roman culture, felicitas is a condition of divinely inspired productivity, blessedness, or happiness. Felicitas could encompass both a woman's fertility and a general's luck or good fortune. The divine personification of Felicitas was cultivated as a goddess. Although felicitas may be translated as "good luck," and the goddess Felicitas shares some characteristics and attributes with Fortuna, the two were distinguished in Roman religion. Fortuna was unpredictable and her effects could be negative, as the existence of an altar to Mala Fortuna acknowledges. Felicitas, however, always had a positive significance. She appears with several epithets that focus on aspects of her divine power.
Mater Matuta was an indigenous Latin goddess, whom the Romans eventually made equivalent to the dawn goddess Aurora and the Greek goddess Eos. She was the goddess of female maturation and later also of the dawn. Her cult is attested to in several places in Latium; her most famous temple was located at Satricum.
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named for Janus (Ianuarius). According to ancient Roman farmers' almanacs, Juno was mistaken as the tutelary deity of the month of January, but Juno is the tutelary deity of the month of June.
Festivals in ancient Rome were a very important part in Roman religious life during both the Republican and Imperial eras, and one of the primary features of the Roman calendar. Feriae were either public (publicae) or private (privatae). State holidays were celebrated by the Roman people and received public funding. Games (ludi), such as the Ludi Apollinares, were not technically feriae, but the days on which they were celebrated were dies festi, holidays in the modern sense of days off work. Although feriae were paid for by the state, ludi were often funded by wealthy individuals. Feriae privatae were holidays celebrated in honor of private individuals or by families. This article deals only with public holidays, including rites celebrated by the state priests of Rome at temples, as well as celebrations by neighborhoods, families, and friends held simultaneously throughout Rome.
The Temple of Portunus is an ancient Roman temple in Rome, Italy. It was built beside the Forum Boarium, the Roman cattle market associated with Hercules, which was adjacent to Rome's oldest river port and the oldest stone bridge across the Tiber River, the Pons Aemilius. It was probably dedicated to the gateway god Portunus although the precise dedication remains unclear as there were several other temples in the area besides his. It was misidentified as the Temple of Fortuna Virilis from the Renaissance and remains better known by this name. The temple is one of the best preserved of all Roman temples.
The Veneralia was an ancient Roman festival celebrated April 1 in honor of Venus Verticordia and Fortuna Virilis.
Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counsellor of the state. She was equated to Hera, queen of the gods in Greek mythology and a goddess of love and marriage. A daughter of Saturn and Ops, she was the sister and wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars, Vulcan, Bellona, Lucina and Juventas. Like Hera, her sacred animal was the peacock. Her Etruscan counterpart was Uni, and she was said to also watch over the women of Rome. As the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire, Juno was called Regina ("Queen") and was a member of the Capitoline Triad, centered on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, and also including Jupiter, and Minerva, goddess of wisdom.
Fortuna is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance. The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomy fortuna / sfortuna plays a prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain "La [dea] fortuna è cieca".
The Forum Boarium was the cattle market or forum venalium of ancient Rome. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. As the site of the original docks of Rome and adjacent to the Pons Aemilius, the earliest stone bridge across the Tiber, the Forum Boarium experienced intense commercial activity.
The Fasti, sometimes translated as The Book of Days or On the Roman Calendar, is a six-book Latin poem written by the Roman poet Ovid and published in AD 8. Ovid is believed to have left the Fasti incomplete when he was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in 8 AD. Written in elegiac couplets and drawing on conventions of Greek and Latin didactic poetry, the Fasti is structured as a series of eye-witness reports and interviews by the first-person vates with Roman deities, who explain the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs—often with multiple aetiologies. The poem is a significant, and in some cases unique, source of fact in studies of religion in ancient Rome; and the influential anthropologist and ritualist J.G. Frazer translated and annotated the work for the Loeb Classical Library series. Each book covers one month, January through June, of the Roman calendar, and was written several years after Julius Caesar replaced the old system of Roman time-keeping with what would come to be known as the Julian calendar.
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Mars is the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He is the son of Jupiter and Juno, and was pre-eminent among the Roman army's military gods. Most of his festivals were held in March, the month named for him, and in October, the months which traditionally began and ended the season for both military campaigning and farming.
Prostitution in ancient Rome was legal and licensed. Men of any social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval, as long as they demonstrated self-control and moderation in the frequency and enjoyment of sex. Brothels were part of the culture of ancient Rome, as popular places of entertainment for Roman men.
The Colline Gate was a landmark in ancient Rome, supposed to have been built by Servius Tullius, semi-legendary king of Rome 578–535 BC. The gate stood at the north end of the Servian Wall, and past it were two important streets, the Via Salaria and Via Nomentana. Within this area the Alta Semita linked the Quirinal with the Porta Carmentalis. Several temples were located near the gate, including temples of Venus Erycina and Fortuna. To a person facing the gate in the 3rd century AD, the Gardens of Sallust would have been on the left, with the Baths of Diocletian on the right.
The Feast of Venus is an oil on canvas painting by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, created in 1635–1636, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a fanciful depiction of the Roman festival Veneralia celebrated in honor of Venus Verticordia.
Venus Verticordia was an aspect of the Roman goddess Venus conceived as having the power to convert either virgins or sexually active women from dissolute desire (libido) to sexual virtue (pudicitia). Under this title, Venus was especially cultivated by married women, and on 1 April she was celebrated at the Veneralia festival with public bathing.
Venus Obsequens was the first Venus for whom a shrine (aedes) was built in ancient Rome. Little is known of her cult beyond the circumstances of her temple founding and a likely connection to the Vinalia Rustica, an August wine festival.
