Love Conquers All

Maybe, Lucilla ponders, the answer lies with the other object Venus is holding: a palm branch. This item, she knows, is a symbol of peace. That’s it, Venus is a bringer of peace in this context! After all, with her charm and beauty, Venus won over the heart of Mars, god of war. Lucilla remembers the box mirror she saw at her friend’s house, with the same Venus image and a small Mars figure to her left. (Fig. 5) Of course it takes the goddess of love and sexuality to tame the god of strife and violence. Peace and concord were recently restored in the Roman Empire, when Septimius became emperor with two healthy sons already born. Thank the gods for Julia Domna’s fecundity, for she established a new dynasty which will stabilize the Empire.The emperor and empress were often assimilated with Mars and Venus as an earthly version of the divine couple. (D.N. Angelova, “Women and Founding from Livia to Helena,” p. 92.)

Lucilla thinks about the hardship Julia must have gone through, giving birth to a second son only 9 months after the first!Dr. Caillan Davenport (Macquarie University), Episode LXXXVII - Severan Stories I, Emperors of Rome (Spotify 2018) [accessed 25 May 2022]She looks up as her husband walks into the house. She rather envies Julia Domna for bearing two healthy sons. She and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for a couple of years now with no luck. At the next visit to the Pompey Theatre, she determines, she will go to the Temple and place a votive offering to Venus Victrix, in the hope of being as sexually powerful as their empress.