Paphian Venus

Reading notes

• The Annals §16.27 Venus Genetrix

  Venus 'the Ancestress', divine mother of the Julian house, in whose temple the cohorts mustered.

• The Histories §2.2 Paphian Venus

  Venus (Aphrodite) as worshipped at Paphos on Cyprus, her chief shrine; her image was not a human figure but a tapering cone, and her altars took prayer and pure fire, never blood.