1I: Introduction

This book will demonstrate the prevalence of Plato’s philosophical model of the ‘twin Venuses’ as it manifested itself at certain points in the continuum of western literature.“Whether Aphrodite is single or double, ‘Ourania’ or ‘Pandemos’ I don’t know; Zeus, who always seems to remain the same, has many titles.” Thus, Socrates in Xenophon’s Symposium 8.9. attempts to rebut Pausanias’s speech2 . Scholars throughout the centuries have acknowledged the view of Xenophon’s Socrates that there is really no difference between the two Aphrodites3. However, about 25 years earlier than Xenophon’s Symposium4, Plato through the speech of Pausanias in his Symposium makes an important distinction, namely, that between two types of Aphrodite: Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos, both of which were later called Plato’s ‘twin Venuses’. As we will see, the concept of the ‘Twin Venuses’ isn’t monolithic. Rather, it exhibits great malleability throughout the ages.

1 Along with Prof. Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer and Dr. Schweiger, I wish to thank Assoc. Prof. Ada Palmer, Prof. Glenn Most and Jeff McMahon for their very helpful comments and recommendations as I was writing this book.

2 For an analysis of the relevant passage from Xenophon’s Symposium see Hunter (2004:45).

3 See for example the view of Grimal (1987:46) and Delivorrias (2008:107113) who have argued that there were originally no differences in the cultic worship of Aphrodite. Aphrodite on their accounts represented a unity of attributes not a duality.

4 See Dover (1965:2) who proposes 385/4 as the likely date of Plato’s Symposium.

My analysis of the ‘twin Venuses5’ as a bifurcative model will concentrate mainly on three primary sources: Plato’s Symposium, Ficino’s Commentarium in Convivium Platonis, and Tennyson’s Lucretius. Specifically, I will focus on the philosophical and allegorical significance of Aphrodite as expressed primarily in Pausanias’s speech in Plato’s Symposium and go on to examine how Ficino developed this distinction in his Commentarium, and how Tennyson is his poem interpreted the suicide of Lucretius6 who was, arguably, possessed by a Venus resembling Aphrodite Pandemos. Moreover, my analysis of Plato’s model concerns both the relation of the twin Venuses to the Platonic dialogue, and allegorical readings of the figure of Aphrodite/Venus in pre-So- cratic7, Platonic, and Neoplatonic philosophy.8 I will then follow the diachronic development9 and reception of Plato’s twin Venuses, taking into consideration a broad range of later sources from Hellenistic antiquity down to the 19th century. In a nutshell, my argument is that Plato’s bifurcative model, or the influence thereof,reappears and evolves throughout Western literature.

5 Referred to so colloquially by Ficino in his Commentarium See Sears (1944:191-192, 208). The term refers to Platonic Aphrodite Urania and Pandemos.

6 The likely source of Tennyson could have been Jerome: an. Abr. 1923 (=660/94) See Pierrepont – Houghton (1950: 13-14) who notes that Tennyson seems to have gathered ‘several facts or traditions’ about Lucretius in his poem. As Palmer has shown in (2014:104-108) this account of ‘Jerome’ is not in fact attributed to ‘Jerome’ but to Eusebius. Furthermore, the scholar notes that there is great controversy about the actual Eusebius-Jerome source itself, see Palmer (2014: esp.127-129, 133-139). The scholar devotes a whole chapter of her book (2014:140-191) to explain misinterpretations of the Eusebius-Jerome source by Lucretius’ biographers from the 1490s through the end of the sixteenth century. See also Wilkinson (1949:47-48) who suggested, as Palmer does (ibid.:127-129), that the fates of Lucretius and Lucullus were confused by Jerome or his source when asserting that Lucretius died from a love potion.

My analysis begins with a description of primordial attributes of Venus recognized since the time of Pre-Socratic philosophy followed by a consideration of the bifurcative model itself as described by Pausanias’s speech in Plato’s Symposium 180d-181e.10 Within Plato’s philosophical circle,Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos were related but distinct concepts. Moreover, this distinction, so prominent in the speech of Pausanias, permeates the thought of Plotinus, Fici-

7 Concerning Pre-Socratic philosophy see Chrysakopoulou (2017: 85) who notes that the worshipers of Aphrodite Urania in Plato’s Symposium seek for ‘psychic likeness’ and that their love produces not children, but, ‘offspring in beauty’. In a similar way, Aphrodite (philotes) in Empedocles ‘brings things together’ according to their ‘likeness’ and not according to their ‘otherness’ as is the case with Ares (neikos).

8 Lucretius’s poem was influential in the Renaissance after the discovery of Poggio Bracciolini, as pointed out by both Palmer (2014: xi, 4-6, 36, 193), Conte (1994:172) and Greenblatt (2012:17-25). See also Norbook who places Greenblatt’s views into perspective. (2016:1, esp.2-3, 4-10).

9 For an analysis of ‘diachrony’ as a model for studying cultural structures of traditions, see Nagy in González (2015: esp.235-37, 238-40).

10 In much later contexts, such readings came to be known as allegorical interpretations. Worton and Still (1990:12) emphasize how each work of art says something other than what it means per se. Reference to other texts triggers creativity on the part of readers and leads to an intertextual analytical approach. The allegorical interpretation of Plato began with Philo Judaeus in the 1st c. CE and continued with Plotinus and Proclus in early Neoplatonism. See also Gale (1994:19-26) on allegory and allegorism.