Aprhodite and Venus Erycina: from Erice to Rome

Romans worshipped the greek goddess Aphrodite as Venus.

Aphrodite had many equivalent deities in others older or contemporary civilizations to her: Ishtar was a Babylonian Assyrian deity. And then follow the Sumerian Inanna, the Egyptian Hathor, the Palestinian Syrian Astarte, the Etruscan Turan, the Roman Venus. Often Romans referred to Venus as Venus Erycina because her cult came from Erice.

Erice, an esoteric town

Since protohistoric times Erice has been the site of ancestral rites in honor of a primordial divinity, first venerated as a goddess of fertility, then goddess of love and beauty.

The particular triangular shape of the town of Erice reveals the magical and esoteric character of the city. The triangle has always represented the female sexual organ and therefore fertility. Furthermore, the triangle represents the letter Delta of the Greek alphabet.

In ancient times triangles and deltas  represented the Greek deity Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty and perfection..

The goddess Aphrodite

Greek Mythology tells of two Aphrodite.  According to Hesiod, the major source on Greek mythology stories, Aphrodite Urania was born from the severed genitals of Uranus and emerged from the sea foam. She represents  ideal love. Aphrodite Pandemos, born from the union of Zeus and Dione,  instead represents sexual love.

Urania was an epithet meaning “heavenly” or “spiritual”, to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, or “Aphrodite for all the people”.

Especially in literature, the two terms distinguished the more “celestial” love of body and soul from purely physical lust.

In mythology Zeus gave Aphrodite in marriage to Hephaestus, god of fire. Unhappiness, however, drove her to marital infidelity. He had several lovers including Ares, god of war, the beautiful Adonis, the Trojan prince Anchise, Bute.

The latter was one of the legendary Argonauts. According to the myth he was the father of Erix, the indigenous king who founded the city  in tribute to his mother and built the temple in his honor.

Venus Erycina

After Rome defeated Carthage the shrine received special cares by Romans.

The Greek Sicilian historian Diodorus  stated that, once on the island, consults, praetors and other authorities had to honour the Goddess in her temple. They did so by traditional ceremonies as well as by visiting her priestesses so that the Goddess could be pleased by their presence.

Venus Erycina in Rome

The worship of Venus Erycina was introduced even in Rome.

During the Second Punic War Quintus Fabius Maximus asked for the protection of Venus Ericina, promising her a temple in Rome. Thus in 215 BC Romans built a temple  to Venus Ericina on the Capitoline Hill.

Consul Marcellus ordered the moving of the statue of the goddess from Erice to Rome.

Thirty years later, still as a vow, another Roman Consul built a much bigger temple  to Venus Ericina, but this time outside the walls. Around the temple there was a porch. Here, in Mid August, some feasts took place in honour of the goddess. As in Erice, some women would practice sacred prostitution, but the ritual lost many of the original spiritual connotations.

It probably became more like simple prostitution, even though the gain went to the temple.
In fact, the Venus Ericina of Porta Collina was the patron saint of prostitutes.

In this area they found the Acrocito Ludovisi and the Ludovisi Throne  in an ancient villa at the end of the nineteenth century. Their features made  think it was the image of Venus brought to Rome by Erice.
In the Ludovisi Throne the central bas-relief represents the birth of Venus, while the two figures on the sides represent the two types of women dedicated to the cult of Venus, which symbolize sacred love and profane love

At the time the policy of Romans was to assimilate and protect the worship of various people under their domination. So they ordered a garrison of “soldiers of Venus” stationed in Erice to guard over the shrine. In addition they stated that seventeen towns particularly loyal should pay a yearly tax for the keeping of the cult.

The epic of Trojans

The privileges granted to  Erice got stronger becouse of the mythical epic of the Trojan wandering through the Mediterranean, as descripted by Virgil in the “Aeneid“. Its III and V books are set in Erice.

Because of this mith, Romans thought there was a relatioship between themselves and the people of Erice. Venus was mother of Aeneas, the progenitor of the Latin people.

Erice reached its greatest fame in this period and it was almost considered the centre of a state religion. The questor of Lilybaeum was responsible for the temple of Venus. In 75 B.C. Cicero was questor of Lilybaeum and the temple was at its best.

Suddenly in the next period the temple underwent a decline due to an economic regression in the island.

The temple collapsed in 25 A.D.. Segestans asked Tiberius first and then Claudius to restore it but only later Emperor Claudius took care of it. He paid for a restoration which added the Roman ritual preparation baths to the side of the sanctuary.

After this evidence handed down by Tacitus  we have no more news of the temple. Eventually Christian religion vanquished all pagan worship so that it declined completely.

Remains of the old temple

There are few ancient remains  on the site. One is the large platform, which was the base of the temple, and which the legend wants to be build by the great Cretan architect Daedalus, the inventor of the labyrinth.

The sacred well still remains. The legend tells that the goddess and her priestesses would  immerse in that purifying bath.

sources:

https://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/galive/the-temple-of-astarte-at-erice/

https://www.kalat.org/archivio/sippolito/

articoli di Michele Di Marco

http://www.romeandart.eu/it/arte-venus-obsequens-ericina.html