Venus Genetrix outside Rome

Abstract

W HEN CAESAR ESTABLISHED in Rome a cult in honor of Venus Genetrix, he added a new dimension to Roman public religion. New cults had often been established in the past, but none had the personal associations that this one did. Although the epithet Genetrix had been used of Venus in poetry for over a century, it was as an ancestral goddess of the Roman people in general. Caesar's family, the Iulii, however, claimed direct descent from Venus through Iulus, the son of Aeneas, and apparently honored her as their particular ancestral deity. In establishing his cult of Venus Genetrix, Caesar was for all practical purposes giving a public form to this family cult, and thereby expressing in religious terms his unique standing in the state.1 This aspect of the cult has long been recognized and has rightly been the subject of much discussion, for it was in these personal associations that the cult was an innovation. In institution and organization, on the other hand, it was traditional enough: Caesar vowed a temple as a general during a battle, dedicated it as a Roman magistrate, and presumably entered an annual sacrifice into the civic calendar as pontifex maximus.2