Venus
The planet Venus is alternatively referred to as the Morning Star or the Evening Star depending on the position in the sky related to sunrise and sunset. Venus is thought to have the Corinthian order appropriate for temples in her honor. The optimal location for temples to Venus are by the harbor and outside of the city walls. The temple to Venus in Caesar’s forum in Rome had pyncostyle intercolumniation of which the thickness of a column and a half could fit between the existing columns. (Kremer, 2025)
“Venus, but at the harbour. It is moreover shown by the Etruscan diviners in treatises on their science that the fanes of Venus, Vulcan, and Mars should be situated outside the walls, in order that the young men and married women may not become habituated in the city to the temptations incident to the worship of Venus, and that buildings may be free from the terror of fires through the religious rites and sacrifices which[32] call the power of Vulcan beyond the walls” (Vitruvius, 15 BCE, Book I, Chapter 7)
“In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance, because these are delicate divinities and so its rather slender outlines, its flowers, leaves, and ornamental volutes will lend propriety where it is due” (Vitruvius, 15 BCE, Book )
“But Mercury and Venus, their paths wreathing around the sun’s rays as their centre, retrograde and delay their movements, and so, from the nature of that circuit, sometimes wait at stopping-places within the spaces of the signs. 7. This fact may best be recognized from Venus. When she is following the sun, she makes her appearance in the sky after his setting, and is then called the Evening Star, shining most brilliantly. At other times she precedes him, rising before day-break, and is named the Morning Star. Thus Mercury and Venus sometimes delay in one sign for a good many days, and at others advance pretty rapidly into another sign. They do not spend the same number of days in every sign, but the longer they have previously delayed, the more rapidly they accomplish their journeys after passing into the next sign, and thus they complete their appointed course. Consequently, in spite of their delay in some of the signs, they nevertheless soon reach the proper place in their orbits after freeing themselves from their enforced delay. 8. Mercury, on his journey through the heavens, passes through the spaces of the signs in three hundred and sixty days, and so arrives at the sign from which he set out on his course at the beginning of his revolution. His average rate of movement is such that he has about thirty days in each sign. 9. Venus, on becoming free from the hindrance of the sun’s rays, crosses the space of a sign in thirty days. Though she thus stays less than forty days in particular signs, she makes good the required amount by delaying in one sign when she comes to a pause. Therefore she completes her total revolution in heaven in four hundred and eighty-five days, and once more enters the sign from which she previously began to move” (Vitruvius, 15 BCE, Book IX, Chapter 1)