Page 70 - All About History - Issue 186-19

he names Venus and Aphrodite
are synonymous with love, and
have been for centuries. Myths
are still told today of the goddess’s
nd of her adventures in antiquity. But
beyond the tales of sex and depravity, underneath
the marble statues and grand temples, lies a history
of the deity that seems to have been forgotten.
The many faces of Venus-Aphrodite are finally
coming to the forefront in a new book by award-
winning historian and writer Bettany Hughes.
The goddess’s fascinating past in the Middle East,
North Africa and even Britain is uncovered in
Venus And Aphrodite, so we’ve sat down to talk
with Bettany about how the Greeks and Romans
venerated her, what happened to her in the
Christian world, how 20th century suffragettes
felt about her image, and more besides.

Why did you choose to look into Venus-
Aphrodite, and why did you decide to
publish this book now?
It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for
a long time. When I was writing about Helen of
Troy, I noticed that actually, although later Helen
gets the blame in the Greek world, really it’s
Aphrodite who is responsible for the Trojan War
as she tempted Paris to fall in love with Helen and
then tempted Helen to run away with Paris. I’ve
always been interested in Aphrodite as an active
agent as a goddess, and so I’ve been gathering
material since then.
For a few years now it has felt like the right
time to bring out the book – firstly because there’s Image source: wiki/Google Cultural Institute Venus was considered to be the
a lot of new archaeological material. But it’s Mother of Rome thanks to her
also because she was responsible for desire and relationship with Anchises. Julius
Caesar, and thus the Julio-Claudian
where it can take you, for good and bad, and at dynasty, claimed ancestry from her
the moment we’re thinking a lot about this with
regards to women. It felt like it was the right time
to gather this all together. How did misogyny and male dominance
change Aphrodite’s role in Greek society?
There are a lot of influences for Venus and She increasingly became somebody who
Aphrodite that came from outside Greece represented the perfect woman, which was soft
and Rome. Do you think there’s one that and subservient. If you look at the Aphrodite th
contributed most? Can there even be a is generated more and more from the 4th centur
definitive answer to this? BCE, she’s far more of a pin-up and she starts to
No, I don’t think there is a definitive answer, but shed her clothes. It’s more about female nudity
that is what’s exciting about her. She is someone than it is about female agency, and that’s what w s
who we think we know, but she has a much more going on. In immortality they reflected what was
brilliantly rich, complicated, mongrel ancestry happening in mortality.
than we imagine. She’s not just the Greek goddess
or Roman takeover – she’s an Eastern goddess, We often hear about the Romans
a North African goddess. assimilating gods from other cultures into
It feels to me that what we do with these their pantheon, but how were the Greeks
incredible figures is we give them an idea, a name influenced by outsiders?
and a face. To me, what Venus represents is From the very earliest Greeks, so the Bronze Age
not just desire, but what we choose to do with civilisations like the Mycenaeans and the Minoans,
it – whether we choose to channel that into trading was vital, so they only survived, not just
lovemaking, or raising a family, or having the thrived, if they understood the cultures that they
ambition. If you think about it, those motivations worked with. They took inspiration from them,
are all human, and they have been there literally cherry-picking the bits they liked, and so actually
since recorded time, so it’s no surprise that the the Greeks themselves were always relating ideas
Aphrodite of these ideas has been around that from other cultures. But from about the 8th © Getty Images
long, too. century BCE, Aphrodite became a goddess of the

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