Venus Barbata

Venus Barbata ('Bearded Venus') was an epithet of the goddess Venus among the Romans.[1] Macrobius[2] also mentions a statue of Venus in Cyprus, representing the goddess with a beard, in female attire, but resembling in her whole figure that of a man (see also Aphroditus).[3] The idea of Venus thus being a mixture of the male and female nature seems to belong to a very late period of antiquity.[4]

The idea of Venus having a double-sexed nature has the same double meaning, in the mythological sense, that there is not only a Luna, but also a Lunus. The name Venus in itself, is masculine in its termination, and it was perceived that the goddess becomes the god and the god the goddess sometimes.[5]

See also

• Venus Castina

Notes

1. Servius. ad Aen, ii. 632.
2. Saturnalia. iii. 8
3. Comp. Suidas, s. v. Ἀφροδίτη; Hesych. s. v. Ἀφρόδιτος
4. Voss, Mythol. Briefe, ii. p. 282, &c.
5. Hargrave 1884, p. 234

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Barbata". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.

• Royal Society of London (1683). Philosophical Transactions. Vol. 13. Printed at the Theater in Oxford. pp. 389–390.
• Jennings, Hargrave (1884). Phallicism: Celestial and Terrestrial, Heathen and Christian. London: Redway. p. 234.
• Pulham, Patricia (2008). Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales. Ashgate Publishing. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-7546-5096-6.