The Planets: Venus

Hail, Venus, Queen of the Heavens! the "Shepherd's Star," gentle mother of the loves, goddess of beauty, eternally adored and cherished, sung and immortalized upon Earth, by poets and artists.

Her splendid brilliancy attracted notice from earliest antiquity, and we find her, radiant and charming, in the works of the ancients, who erected altars to her and adorned their poetry with her grace and beauty. Homer calls her Callisto the Beautiful; Cicero names her Vesper, the evening star, and Lucifer, the star of the morning for it was with this divinity as with Mercury. For a long while she was regarded as two separate planets, and it was only when it came to be observed that the evening and the morning star were always in periodic succession, that the identity of the orb was recognized.