The images of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, represented in sculpture, in small plastics arts, on mosaic, on wall-painting were found in Britain. Such works of art manufactured in expensive materials (in bronze and marble, in the technique of mosaic and fresco) were imported by wealthy people who themselves had come to Britain from Rome or from the Romanized Gaul. But there is a much more numerous group of cheap clay figurines representing Venus which were discovered on the former territories of Roman Britain. The cult of these Venus was confined to the poorer classes who could not afford the more expensive materials. This category of British population was not highly Romanized. So the cult was local and Venus of clay figurines was not the classical Roman goddess of love and beauty. Since however art-type is actually that of Venus, then at first sight it would seem that under the influence of interpretatio Romana the Celtic goddess of love and beauty received an appearance of Roman Venus. But Celts had no goddess of love and beauty. Therefore scholars name the deity represented by the clay figurines the “pseudo-Venus”. It was an anonymous Celtic goddess of fertility. She is represented as Roman Venus because at first Venus also was a deity of fertility and both of them go back to the most ancient feminine archetype of the Great Mother.

Translated title of the contributionROMAN VENUS IN BRITAIN
Original languageRussian
Pages (from-to)106-126
JournalНовый Гермес
Issue number10
StatePublished - 2018

ID: 43040322