Venus Barbata ('Bearded Venus') was an epithet of the goddess
Venus among the Romans.
Macrobius
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...
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). The idea of Venus thus being a mixture of the male and female nature seems to belong to a very late period of antiquity.
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.
[Hargrave 1884, p. 234]
See also
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Venus Castina
Venus Castina ('Chaste Venus') from Latin '' castus'', is claimed to be an epithet of the Roman goddess Venus; in this form, she was supposedly associated with "the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies".
Cesare Lombroso wrote tha ...
Notes
References
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*{{cite book, first=Patricia, last=Pulham, date=2008, title=Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales, isbn=978-0-7546-5096-6, pag
58publisher=Ashgate Publishing , url=https://archive.org/details/trent_0116405729355/page/58
Androgynous and hermaphroditic deities
Barbata
Barbata (Bergamasque: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Bergamo in the Italian region of Lombardy, located about east of Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, a ...