title: Prometheus

text: The etymology of the theonym "prometheus" is debated. The usual view is that it signifies "forethought", as that of his brother Epimetheus denotes "afterthought". Hesychius of Alexandria gives Prometheus the variant name of Ithas, and adds "whom others call Ithax", and describes him as the Herald of the Titans. Kerényi remarks that these names are "not transparent", and may be different readings of the same name, while the name "Prometheus" is descriptive.


title: Prometheus

text: It has also been theorised that it derives from the Proto-Indo-European root that also produces the Vedic "pra math", "to steal", hence "pramathyu-s", "thief", cognate with "Prometheus", the thief of fire. The Vedic myth of fire's theft by Mātariśvan is an analogue to the Greek account. "Pramant" was the fire-drill, the tool used to create fire. The suggestion that Prometheus was in origin the human "inventor of the fire-sticks, from which fire is kindled" goes back to Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC. The reference is again to the "fire-drill", a worldwide primitive method of fire making using a vertical and a horizontal piece of wood to produce fire by friction.


title: Prometheus

text: The oldest record of Prometheus is in Hesiod, but stories of theft of fire by a trickster figure are widespread around the world. Some other aspects of the story resemble the Sumerian myth of Enki (or Ea in later Babylonian mythology), who was also a bringer of civilization who protected humanity against the other gods, including during the great flood, as well as created man from clay. While the theory lost favour in the 20th century that Prometheus descends from the Vedic fire bringer Mātariśvan, it was suggested in the 19th century and is still supported by some.


title: Prometheus

text: The first recorded account of the Prometheus myth appeared in the late 8th-century BC Greek epic poet Hesiod's "Theogony" (507–616). In that account, Prometheus was a son of the Titan Iapetus by Clymene or Asia, one of the Oceanids. He was brother to Menoetius, Atlas, and Epimetheus. Hesiod, in "Theogony", introduces Prometheus as a lowly challenger to Zeus's omniscience and omnipotence.


title: Prometheus

text: In the trick at Mecone (535–544), a sacrificial meal marking the "settling of accounts" between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus. He placed two sacrificial offerings before the Olympian: a selection of beef hidden inside an ox's stomach (nourishment hidden inside a displeasing exterior), and the bull's bones wrapped completely in "glistening fat" (something inedible hidden inside a pleasing exterior). Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices (556–557). Henceforth, humans would keep that meat for themselves and burn the bones wrapped in fat as an offering to the gods. This angered Zeus, who hid fire from humans in retribution. In this version of the myth, the use of fire was already known to humans, but withdrawn by Zeus.


title: Prometheus

text: Prometheus stole fire back from Zeus in a fennel stalk and restored it to humanity (565–566). This further enraged Zeus, who sent the first woman to live with humanity (Pandora, not explicitly mentioned). The woman, a "shy maiden", was fashioned by Hephaestus out of clay and Athena helped to adorn her properly (571–574). Hesiod writes, "From her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth" (590–594). For his crimes, Prometheus was punished by Zeus, who bound him with chains and sent an eagle to eat Prometheus' immortal liver every day, which then grew back every night. Years later, the Greek hero Heracles, with Zeus' permission, killed the eagle and freed Prometheus from this torment (521–529).


title: Prometheus

text: Hesiod revisits the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire in "Works and Days" (42–105). In it the poet expands upon Zeus's reaction to Prometheus' deception. Not only does Zeus withhold fire from humanity, but "the means of life" as well (42). Had Prometheus not provoked Zeus's wrath, "you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste" (44–47).


title: Prometheus

text: Hesiod also adds more information to "Theogony"'s story of the first woman, a maiden crafted from earth and water by Hephaestus now explicitly called Pandora (""all gifts"") (82). Zeus in this case gets the help of Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes, the Graces and the Hours (59–76). After Prometheus steals the fire, Zeus sends Pandora in retaliation. Despite Prometheus' warning, Epimetheus accepts this "gift" from the gods (89). Pandora carried a jar with her from which were released mischief and sorrow, plague and diseases (94–100). Pandora shuts the lid of the jar too late to contain all the evil plights that escaped, but Hope is left trapped in the jar because Zeus forces Pandora to seal it up before Hope can escape (96–99).


title: Prometheus

text: Casanova (1979), finds in Prometheus a reflection of an ancient, pre-Hesiodic trickster-figure, who served to account for the mixture of good and bad in human life, and whose fashioning of humanity from clay was an Eastern motif familiar in "Enuma Elish". As an opponent of Zeus, the titan Prometheus can be seen as characteristic of the titans in general, and like other titans, was punished for his opposition. As an advocate for humanity he gains semi-divine status at Athens, where the episode in "Theogony" in which he is liberated is interpreted by Casanova as a post-Hesiodic interpolation.


title: Prometheus

text: According to the German classicist , in Hesiod's scriptures, Prometheus represents the "descent of mankind from the communion with the gods into the present troublesome life".


title: Prometheus

text: The Titanomachy is a lost epic of the cosmological struggle between the Greek gods and their parents, the Titans, and is a probable source of the Prometheus myth. along with the works of Hesiod. Its reputed author was anciently supposed to have lived in the 8th century BC, but M. L. West has argued that it can't be earlier than the late 7th century BC. Presumably included in the Titanomachy is the story of Prometheus, himself a Titan, who managed to avoid being in the direct confrontational cosmic battle between Zeus and the other Olympians against Cronus and the other Titans (although there is no direct evidence of Prometheus' inclusion in the epic). M. L. West notes that surviving references suggest that there may have been significant differences between the Titanomachy epic and the account of events in Hesiod; and that the Titanomachy may be the source of later variants of the Prometheus myth not found in Hesiod, notably the non-Hesiodic material found in the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus.


title: Prometheus

text: The two major authors to have an influence on the development of the myths and legends surrounding the Titan Prometheus during the Socratic era of greater Athens were Aeschylus and Plato. The two men wrote in highly distinctive forms of expression which for Aeschylus centered on his mastery of the literary form of Greek tragedy, while for Plato this centered on the philosophical expression of his thought in the form of the various dialogues he wrote during his lifetime.


title: Prometheus

text: "Prometheus Bound", perhaps the most famous treatment of the myth to be found among the Greek tragedies, is traditionally attributed to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus. At the centre of the drama are the results of Prometheus' theft of fire and his current punishment by Zeus. The playwright's dependence on the Hesiodic source material is clear, though "Prometheus Bound" also includes a number of changes to the received tradition. It has been suggested by M.L. West that these changes may derive from the now lost epic Titanomachy.


title: Prometheus

text: Before his theft of fire, Prometheus played a decisive role in the Titanomachy, securing victory for Zeus and the other Olympians. Zeus' torture of Prometheus thus becomes a particularly harsh betrayal. The scope and character of Prometheus' transgressions against Zeus are also widened. In addition to giving humanity fire, Prometheus claims to have taught them the arts of civilisation, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. The Titan's greatest benefaction for humanity seems to have been saving them from complete destruction. In an apparent twist on the myth of the so-called Five Ages of Man found in Hesiod's "Works and Days" (wherein Cronus and, later, Zeus created and destroyed five successive races of humanity), Prometheus asserts that Zeus had wanted to obliterate the human race, but that he somehow stopped him.


title: Prometheus

text: Moreover, Aeschylus anachronistically and artificially injects Io, another victim of Zeus's violence and ancestor of Heracles, into Prometheus' story. Finally, just as Aeschylus gave Prometheus a key role in bringing Zeus to power, he also attributed to him secret knowledge that could lead to Zeus's downfall: Prometheus had been told by his mother Themis, who in the play is identified with Gaia (Earth), of a potential marriage that would produce a son who would overthrow Zeus. Fragmentary evidence indicates that Heracles, as in Hesiod, frees the Titan in the trilogy's second play, "Prometheus Unbound". It is apparently not until Prometheus reveals this secret of Zeus's potential downfall that the two reconcile in the final play, "Prometheus the Fire-Bringer" or "Prometheus Pyrphoros", a lost tragedy by Aeschylus.


title: Prometheus

text: "Prometheus Bound" also includes two mythic innovations of omission. The first is the absence of Pandora's story in connection with Prometheus' own. Instead, Aeschylus includes this one oblique allusion to Pandora and her jar that contained Hope (252): "[Prometheus] caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men." Second, Aeschylus makes no mention of the sacrifice-trick played against Zeus in the "Theogony". The four tragedies of Prometheus attributed to Aeschylus, most of which are lost to the passages of time into antiquity, are "Prometheus Bound" ("Prometheus Desmotes"), "Prometheus Unbound" ("Lyomenos"), "Prometheus the Fire Bringer" ("Pyrphoros"), and "Prometheus the Fire Kindler" ("Pyrkaeus").


title: Prometheus

text: The larger scope of Aeschylus as a dramatist revisiting the myth of Prometheus in the age of Athenian prominence has been discussed by William Lynch. Lynch's general thesis concerns the rise of humanist and secular tendencies in Athenian culture and society which required the growth and expansion of the mythological and religious tradition as acquired from the most ancient sources of the myth stemming from Hesiod. For Lynch, modern scholarship is hampered by not having the full trilogy of Prometheus by Aeschylus, the last two parts of which have been lost to antiquity. Significantly, Lynch further comments that although the Prometheus trilogy is not available, the "Orestia" trilogy by Aeschylus remains available and may be assumed to provide significant insight into the overall structural intentions which may be ascribed to the Prometheus trilogy by Aeschylus as an author of significant consistency and exemplary dramatic erudition.


title: Prometheus

text: Harold Bloom, in his research guide for Aeschylus, has summarised some of the critical attention that has been applied to Aeschylus concerning his general philosophical import in Athens. As Bloom states, "Much critical attention has been paid to the question of theodicy in Aeschylus. For generations, scholars warred incessantly over 'the justice of Zeus,' unintentionally blurring it with a monotheism imported from Judeo-Christian thought. The playwright undoubtedly had religious concerns; for instance, Jacqueline de Romilly suggests that his treatment of time flows directly out of his belief in divine justice. But it would be an error to think of Aeschylus as sermonising. His Zeus does not arrive at decisions which he then enacts in the mortal world; rather, human events are themselves an enactment of divine will."


title: Prometheus

text: According to Thomas Rosenmeyer, regarding the religious import of Aeschylus, "In Aeschylus, as in Homer, the two levels of causation, the supernatural and the human, are co-existent and simultaneous, two ways of describing the same event." Rosenmeyer insists that ascribing portrayed characters in Aeschylus should not conclude them to be either victims or agents of theological or religious activity too quickly. As Rosenmeyer states: "[T]he text defines their being. For a critic to construct an Aeschylean theology would be as quixotic as designing a typology of Aeschylean man. The needs of the drama prevail."


title: Prometheus

text: In a rare comparison of Prometheus in Aeschylus with Oedipus in Sophocles, Harold Bloom states that "Freud called "Oedipus" an 'immoral play,' since the gods ordained incest and parricide. Oedipus therefore participates in our universal unconscious sense of guilt, but on this reading so do the gods" [...] "I sometimes wish that Freud had turned to Aeschylus instead, and given us the Prometheus complex rather than the Oedipus complex."


title: Prometheus

text: Olga Raggio, in her study "The Myth of Prometheus", attributes Plato in the "Protagoras" as an important contributor to the early development of the Prometheus myth. Raggio indicates that many of the more challenging and dramatic assertions which Aeschylean tragedy explores are absent from Plato's writings about Prometheus.


title: Prometheus

text: As summarised by Raggio, Raggio then goes on to point out Plato's distinction of creative power ("techne"), which is presented as superior to merely natural instincts ("physis").


title: Prometheus

text: For Plato, only the virtues of "reverence and justice can provide for the maintenance of a civilised society – and these virtues are the highest gift finally bestowed on men in equal measure." The ancients by way of Plato believed that the name "Prometheus" derived from the Greek prefix "pro"- (before) + "manthano" (intelligence) and the agent suffix -"eus", thus meaning "Forethinker".


title: Prometheus

text: In his dialogue titled "Protagoras", Plato contrasts Prometheus with his dull-witted brother Epimetheus, "Afterthinker". In Plato's dialogue "Protagoras", Protagoras asserts that the gods created humans and all the other animals, but it was left to Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus to give defining attributes to each. As no physical traits were left when the pair came to humans, Prometheus decided to give them fire and other civilising arts.


title: Prometheus

text: It is understandable that since Prometheus was considered a Titan (distinct from an Olympian) that there would be an absence of evidence, with the exception of Athens, for the direct religious devotion to his worship. Despite his importance to the myths and imaginative literature of ancient Greece, the religious cult of Prometheus during the Archaic and Classical periods seems to have been limited. Writing in the 2nd century AD, the satirist Lucian points out that while temples for the major Olympians were everywhere, none for Prometheus is to be seen.


title: Prometheus

text: Athens was the exception, here Prometheus was worshipped alongside Athena and Hephaestus. The altar of Prometheus in the grove of the Academy was the point of origin for several significant processions and other events regularly observed on the Athenian calendar. For the Panathenaic festival, arguably the most important civic festival at Athens, a torch race began at the altar, which was located outside the sacred boundary of the city, and passed through the Kerameikos, the district inhabited by potters and other artisans who regarded Prometheus and Hephaestus as patrons. The race then travelled to the heart of the city, where it kindled the sacrificial fire on the altar of Athena on the Acropolis to conclude the festival. These footraces took the form of relays in which teams of runners passed off a flaming torch. According to Pausanias (2nd century AD), the torch relay, called "lampadedromia" or "lampadephoria", was first instituted at Athens in honour of Prometheus.


title: Prometheus

text: By the Classical period, the races were run by ephebes also in honour of Hephaestus and Athena. Prometheus' association with fire is the key to his religious significance and to the alignment with Athena and Hephaestus that was specific to Athens and its "unique degree of cultic emphasis" on honouring technology. The festival of Prometheus was the Prometheia. The wreaths worn symbolised the chains of Prometheus. There is a pattern of resemblances between Hephaestus and Prometheus. Although the classical tradition is that Hephaestus split Zeus's head to allow Athena's birth, that story has also been told of Prometheus. A variant tradition makes Prometheus the son of Hera like Hephaestus. According to that version, the Giant Eurymedon raped Hera when she was young, and she had Prometheus. After Zeus married Hera, he threw Eurymedon into Tartarus and punished Prometheus in Caucasus, using the theft of fire as an excuse. Ancient artists depict Prometheus wearing the pointed cap of an artist or artisan, like Hephaestus, and also the crafty hero Odysseus. The artisan's cap was also depicted as worn by the Cabeiri, supernatural craftsmen associated with a mystery cult known in Athens in classical times, and who were associated with both Hephaestus and Prometheus. Kerényi suggests that Hephaestus may in fact be the "successor" of Prometheus, despite Hephaestus being himself of archaic origin.


title: Prometheus

text: Pausanias recorded a few other religious sites in Greece devoted to Prometheus. Both Argos and Opous claimed to be Prometheus' final resting place, each erecting a tomb in his honour. The Greek city of Panopeus had a cult statue that was supposed to honour Prometheus for having created the human race there.


title: Prometheus

text: Prometheus' torment by the eagle and his rescue by Heracles were popular subjects in vase paintings of the 6th to 4th centuries BC. He also sometimes appears in depictions of Athena's birth from Zeus' forehead. There was a relief sculpture of Prometheus with Pandora on the base of Athena's cult statue in the Athenian Parthenon of the 5th century BC. A similar rendering is also found at the great altar of Zeus at Pergamon from the second century BC.


title: Prometheus

text: The event of the release of Prometheus from captivity was frequently revisited on Attic and Etruscan vases between the sixth and fifth centuries BC. In the depiction on display at the Museum of Karlsruhe and in Berlin, the depiction is that of Prometheus confronted by a menacing large bird (assumed to be the eagle) with Heracles approaching from behind shooting his arrows at it. In the fourth century this imagery was modified to depicting Prometheus bound in a cruciform manner, possibly reflecting an Aeschylus-inspired manner of influence, again with an eagle and with Heracles approaching from the side.


title: Prometheus

text: Some two dozen other Greek and Roman authors retold and further embellished the Prometheus myth from as early as the 5th century BC (Diodorus, Herodorus) into the 4th century AD. The most significant detail added to the myth found in, e.g., Sappho, Aesop and Ovid was the central role of Prometheus in the creation of the human race. According to these sources, Prometheus fashioned humans out of clay.


title: Prometheus

text: Although perhaps made explicit in the "Prometheia", later authors such as Hyginus, the "Bibliotheca", and Quintus of Smyrna would confirm that Prometheus warned Zeus not to marry the sea nymph Thetis. She is consequently married off to the mortal Peleus, and bears him a son greater than the father – Achilles, Greek hero of the Trojan War. Pseudo-Apollodorus moreover clarifies a cryptic statement (1026–29) made by Hermes in "Prometheus Bound", identifying the centaur Chiron as the one who would take on Prometheus' suffering and die in his place. Reflecting a myth attested in Greek vase paintings from the Classical period, Pseudo-Apollodorus places the Titan (armed with an axe) at the birth of Athena, thus explaining how the goddess sprang forth from the forehead of Zeus.


title: Prometheus

text: Other minor details attached to the myth include: the duration of Prometheus' torment; the origin of the eagle that ate the Titan's liver (found in Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus); Pandora's marriage to Epimetheus (found in Pseudo-Apollodorus); myths surrounding the life of Prometheus' son, Deucalion (found in Ovid and Apollonius of Rhodes); and Prometheus' marginal role in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts (found in Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus).


title: Prometheus

text: "Variants of legends containing the Prometheus motif are widespread in the Caucasus" region, reports Hunt, who gave ten stories related to Prometheus from ethno-linguistic groups in the region.


title: Prometheus

text: Prometheus finally makes an appearance in Athenian playwright Aristophanes's comedy "The Birds", where he is seen living on Mount Olympus after the end of his long torture, apparently having reconciled with the other gods. He is presented not as the dauntless rebel who questioned Zeus, but rather as a timid god who goes to negotiate with the titular Birds disguised, so that Zeus will not notice him talking to the enemy.


title: Prometheus

text: Zahhak, an evil figure in Iranian mythology, also ends up eternally chained on a mountainside – though the rest of his career is dissimilar to that of Prometheus.


title: Prometheus

text: The three most prominent aspects of the Prometheus myth have parallels within the beliefs of many cultures "The Prometheus myth of creation as a visual symbol of the Neoplatonic concept of human nature, illustrated in (many) sarcophagi, was evidently a contradiction of the Christian teaching of the unique and simultaneous act of creation by the Trinity." This Neoplatonism of late Roman antiquity was especially stressed by Tertullian who recognised both difference and similarity of the biblical deity with the mythological figure of Prometheus.


title: Prometheus

text: The imagery of Prometheus and the creation of man used for the purposes of the representation of the creation of Adam in biblical symbolism is also a recurrent theme in the artistic expression of late Roman antiquity. Of the relatively rare expressions found of the creation of Adam in those centuries of late Roman antiquity, one can single out the so-called "Dogma sarcophagus" of the Lateran Museum where three figures (commonly taken to represent the theological trinity) are seen in making a benediction to the new man. Another example is found where the prototype of Prometheus is also recognisable in the early Christian era of late Roman antiquity. This can be found upon a sarcophagus of the Church at Mas d'Aire as well, and in an even more direct comparison to what Raggio refers to as "a coarsely carved relief from Campli (Teramo) (where) the Lord sits on a throne and models the body of Adam, exactly like Prometheus." Still another such similarity is found in the example found on a Hellenistic relief presently in the Louvre in which the Lord gives life to Eve through the imposition of his two fingers on her eyes recalling the same gesture found in earlier representations of Prometheus.


title: Prometheus

text: In Georgian mythology, Amirani is a cultural hero who challenged the chief god and, like Prometheus, was chained on the Caucasian mountains where birds would eat his organs. This aspect of the myth had a significant influence on the Greek imagination. It is recognisable from a Greek gem roughly dated to the time of the Hesiod poems, which show Prometheus with hands bound behind his body and crouching before a bird with long wings. This same image would also be used later in the Rome of the Augustan age as documented by Furtwangler.


title: Prometheus

text: In the often cited and highly publicised interview between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers on Public Television, the author of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" presented his view on the comparison of Prometheus and Jesus. Moyers asked Campbell the question in the following words, "In this sense, unlike heroes such as Prometheus or Jesus, we're not going on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves." To which Campbell's well-known response was that, "But in doing that, you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules [...] No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself." For Campbell, Jesus suffered mortally on the Cross while Prometheus suffered eternally while chained to a rock, and each of them received punishment for the gift which they bestowed to humankind, for Jesus this was the gift of propitiation from Heaven, and, for Prometheus this was the gift of fire from Olympus.


title: Prometheus

text: Significantly, Campbell is also clear to indicate the limits of applying the metaphors of his methodology in his book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" too closely in assessing the comparison of Prometheus and Jesus. Of the four symbols of suffering associated with Jesus after his trial in Jerusalem (i) the crown of thorns, (ii) the scourge of whips, (iii) the nailing to the Cross, and (iv) the spearing of his side, it is only this last one which bears some resemblance to the eternal suffering of Prometheus' daily torment of an eagle devouring a replenishing organ, his liver, from his side. For Campbell, the striking contrast between the New Testament narratives and the Greek mythological narratives remains at the limiting level of the cataclysmic eternal struggle of the eschatological New Testament narratives occurring only at the very end of the biblical narratives in the "Apocalypse of John" (12:7) where, "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven." This eschatological and apocalyptic setting of a Last Judgement is in precise contrast to the "Titanomachia" of Hesiod which serves its distinct service to Greek mythology as its "Prolegomenon", bracketing all subsequent mythology, including the creation of humanity, as coming after the cosmological struggle between the Titans and the Olympian gods.


title: Prometheus

text: It remains a continuing debate among scholars of comparative religion and the literary reception of mythological and religious subject matter as to whether the typology of suffering and torment represented in the Prometheus myth finds its more representative comparisons with the narratives of the Hebrew scriptures or with the New Testament narratives. In the Book of Job, significant comparisons can be drawn between the sustained suffering of Job in comparison to that of eternal suffering and torment represented in the Prometheus myth. With Job, the suffering is at the acquiescence of heaven and at the will of the demonic, while in Prometheus the suffering is directly linked to Zeus as the ruler of Olympus. The comparison of the suffering of Jesus after his sentencing in Jerusalem is limited to the three days, from Thursday to Saturday, and leading to the culminating narratives corresponding to Easter Sunday. The symbolic import for comparative religion would maintain that suffering related to justified conduct is redeemed in both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament narratives, while in Prometheus there remains the image of a non-forgiving deity, Zeus, who nonetheless requires reverence.


title: Prometheus

text: Writing in late antiquity of the fourth and fifth century, the Latin commentator Marcus Servius Honoratus explained that Prometheus was so named because he was a man of great foresight "(vir prudentissimus)", possessing the abstract quality of "providentia", the Latin equivalent of Greek "promētheia" (). Anecdotally, the Roman fabulist Phaedrus (c.15 BC – c.50 AD) attributes to Aesop a simple etiology for homosexuality, in Prometheus' getting drunk while creating the first humans and misapplying the genitalia.


title: Prometheus

text: Perhaps the most influential book of the Middle Ages upon the reception of the Prometheus myth was the mythological handbook of Fulgentius Placiades. As stated by Raggio, "The text of Fulgentius, as well as that of (Marcus) Servius [...] are the main sources of the mythological handbooks written in the ninth century by the anonymous "Mythographus Primus" and "Mythographus Secundus". Both were used for the more lengthy and elaborate compendium by the English scholar Alexander Neckman (1157–1217), the "Scintillarium Poetarum", or "Poetarius"." The purpose of his books was to distinguish allegorical interpretation from the historical interpretation of the Prometheus myth. Continuing in this same tradition of the allegorical interpretation of the Prometheus myth, along with the historical interpretation of the Middle Ages, is the "Genealogiae" of Giovanni Boccaccio. Boccaccio follows these two levels of interpretation and distinguishes between two separate versions of the Prometheus myth. For Boccaccio, Prometheus is placed "In the heavens where all is clarity and truth, [Prometheus] steals, so to speak, a ray of the divine wisdom from God himself, source of all Science, supreme Light of every man." With this, Boccaccio shows himself moving from the mediaeval sources with a shift of accent towards the attitude of the Renaissance humanists.


title: Prometheus

text: Using a similar interpretation to that of Boccaccio, Marsilio Ficino in the fifteenth century updated the philosophical and more sombre reception of the Prometheus myth not seen since the time of Plotinus. In his book written in 1476–77 titled "Quaestiones Quinque de Mente", Ficino indicates his preference for reading the Prometheus myth as an image of the human soul seeking to obtain supreme truth. As Raggio summarises Ficino's text, "The torture of Prometheus is the torment brought by reason itself to man, who is made by it many times more unhappy than the brutes. It is after having stolen one beam of the celestial light [...] that the soul feels as if fastened by chains and [...] only death can release her bonds and carry her to the source of all knowledge." This sombreness of attitude in Ficino's text would be further developed later by Charles de Bouelles' "Liber de Sapiente" of 1509 which presented a mix of both scholastic and Neoplatonic ideas.


title: Prometheus

text: After the writings of both Boccaccio and Ficino in the late Middle Ages about Prometheus, interest in the Titan shifted considerably in the direction of becoming subject matter for painters and sculptors alike. Among the most famous examples is that of Piero di Cosimo from about 1510 presently on display at the museums of Munich and Strasburg (see Inset). Raggio summarises the Munich version as follows; "The Munich panel represents the dispute between Epimetheus and Prometheus, the handsome triumphant statue of the new man, modelled by Prometheus, his ascension to the sky under the guidance of Minerva; the Strasburg panel shows in the distance Prometheus lighting his torch at the wheels of the Sun, and in the foreground on one side, Prometheus applying his torch to the heart of the statue and, on the other, Mercury fastening him to a tree." All the details are evidently borrowed from Boccaccio's "Genealogiae".


title: Prometheus

text: The same reference to the "Genealogiae" can be cited as the source for the drawing by Parmigianino presently located in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. In the drawing, a very noble rendering of Prometheus is presented which evokes the memory of Michelangelo's works portraying Jehovah. This drawing is perhaps one of the most intense examples of the visualisation of the myth of Prometheus from the Renaissance period.


title: Prometheus

text: Writing in the late British Renaissance, William Shakespeare uses the Promethean allusion in the famous death scene of Desdemona in his tragedy of "Othello". Othello in contemplating the death of Desdemona asserts plainly that he cannot restore the "Promethean heat" to her body once it has been extinguished. For Shakespeare, the allusion is clearly to the interpretation of the fire from the heat as the bestowing of life to the creation of man from clay by Prometheus after it was stolen from Olympus. The analogy bears direct resemblance to the biblical narrative of the creation of life in Adam through the bestowed breathing of the creator in Genesis. Shakespeare's symbolic reference to the "heat" associated with Prometheus' fire is to the association of the gift of fire to the mythological gift or theological gift of life to humans.


title: Prometheus

text: The myth of Prometheus has been a favourite theme of Western art and literature in the post-renaissance and post-Enlightenment tradition and, occasionally, in works produced outside the West.


title: Prometheus

text: For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomised by Zeus – church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's "Paradise Lost", and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's "Sturm und Drang" poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. In "Prometheus Unbound" (1820), a four-act lyrical drama, Percy Bysshe Shelley rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (under the Latin name Jupiter), but instead supplants him in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion. Lord Byron's poem "Prometheus" also portrays the Titan as unrepentant. As documented by Raggio, other leading figures among the great Romantics included Byron, Longfellow and Nietzsche as well. Mary Shelley's 1818 novel "Frankenstein" is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", in reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern humanity into dangerous areas of knowledge.


title: Prometheus

text: "Prometheus" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which a character based on the mythic Prometheus addresses God (as Zeus) in a romantic and misotheist tone of accusation and defiance. The poem was written between 1772 and 1774. It was first published fifteen years later in 1789. It is an important work as it represents one of the first encounters of the Prometheus myth with the literary Romantic movement identified with Goethe and with the Sturm und Drang movement.


title: Prometheus

text: The poem has appeared in Volume 6 of Goethe's poems (in his Collected Works) in a section of "" (assorted poems), shortly following the "Harzreise im Winter". It is immediately followed by "Ganymed", and the two poems are written as informing each other according to Goethe's plan in their actual writing. "Prometheus" (1774) was originally planned as a drama but never completed by Goethe, though the poem is inspired by it. Prometheus is the creative and rebellious spirit rejected by God and who angrily defies him and asserts himself. Ganymede, by direct contrast, is the boyish self who is both adored and seduced by God. As a high Romantic poet and a humanist poet, Goethe presents both identities as contrasting aspects of the Romantic human condition.


title: Prometheus

text: The poem offers direct biblical connotations for the Prometheus myth which was unseen in any of the ancient Greek poets dealing with the Prometheus myth in either drama, tragedy, or philosophy. The intentional use of the German phrase "" ("When I was a child"): the use of "" is distinctive, and with it Goethe directly applies the Lutheran translation of Saint Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, : "" ("When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things"). Goethe's Prometheus is significant for the contrast it evokes with the biblical text of Corinthians rather than for its similarities.


title: Prometheus

text: In his book titled "Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence", C. Kerényi states the key contrast between Goethe's version of Prometheus with the ancient Greek version. As Kerényi states, "Goethe's Prometheus had Zeus for father and a goddess for mother. With this change from the traditional lineage the poet distinguished his hero from the race of the Titans." For Goethe, the metaphorical comparison of Prometheus to the image of the Son from the New Testament narratives was of central importance, with the figure of Zeus in Goethe's reading being metaphorically matched directly to the image of the Father from the New Testament narratives.


title: Prometheus

text: Percy Shelley published his four-act lyrical drama titled "Prometheus Unbound" in 1820. His version was written in response to the version of myth as presented by Aeschylus and is orientated to the high British Idealism and high British Romanticism prevailing in Shelley's own time. Shelley, as the author himself discusses, admits the debt of his version of the myth to Aeschylus and the Greek poetic tradition which he assumes is familiar to readers of his own lyrical drama. For example, it is necessary to understand and have knowledge of the reason for Prometheus' punishment if the reader is to form an understanding of whether the exoneration portrayed by Shelley in his version of the Prometheus myth is justified or unjustified. The quote of Shelley's own words describing the extent of his indebtedness to Aeschylus has been published in numerous sources publicly available.


title: Prometheus

text: The literary critic Harold Bloom in his book "Shelley's Mythmaking" expresses his high expectation of Shelley in the tradition of mythopoeic poetry. For Bloom, Percy Shelley's relationship to the tradition of mythology in poetry "culminates in 'Prometheus'. The poem provides a complete statement of Shelley's vision." Bloom devotes two full chapters in this 1959 book to Shelley's lyrical drama "Prometheus Unbound". Following his 1959 book, Bloom edited an anthology of critical opinions on Shelley for Chelsea House Publishers where he concisely stated his opinion as, "Shelley is the unacknowledged ancestor of Wallace Stevens' conception of poetry as the Supreme Fiction, and "Prometheus Unbound" is the most capable imagining, outside of Blake and Wordsworth, that the Romantic quest for a Supreme Fiction has achieved."


title: Prometheus

text: Within the pages of his Introduction to the Chelsea House edition on Percy Shelley, Bloom also identifies the six major schools of criticism opposing Shelley's idealised mythologising version of the Prometheus myth. In sequence, the opposing schools to Shelley are given as: (i) The school of "common sense", (ii) The Christian orthodox, (iii) The school of "wit", (iv) Moralists, of most varieties, (v) The school of "classic" form, and (vi) The Precisionists, or concretists. Although Bloom is least interested in the first two schools, the second one on the Christian orthodox has special bearing on the reception of the Prometheus myth during late Roman antiquity and the synthesis of the New Testament canon. The Greek origins of the Prometheus myth have already discussed the "Titanomachia" as placing the cosmic struggle of Olympus at some point in time preceding the creation of humanity, while in the New Testament synthesis there was a strong assimilation of the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew prophets and their strongly eschatological orientation. This contrast placed a strong emphasis within the ancient Greek consciousness as to the moral and ontological acceptance of the mythology of the "Titanomachia" as an accomplished mythological history, whereas for the synthesis of the New Testament narratives this placed religious consciousness within the community at the level of an anticipated "eschaton" not yet accomplished. Neither of these would guide Percy Shelley in his poetic retelling and re-integration of the Prometheus myth.


title: Prometheus

text: To the Socratic Greeks, one important aspect of the discussion of religion would correspond to the philosophical discussion of 'becoming' with respect to the New Testament syncretism rather than the ontological discussion of 'being' which was more prominent in the ancient Greek experience of mythologically oriented cult and religion. For Shelley, both of these reading were to be substantially discounted in preference to his own concerns for promoting his own version of an idealised consciousness of a society guided by the precepts of High British Romanticism and High British Idealism.


title: Prometheus

text: "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus", written by Mary Shelley when she was 18, was published in 1818, two years before Percy Shelley's above-mentioned play. It has endured as one of the most frequently revisited literary themes in twentieth century film and popular reception with few rivals for its sheer popularity among even established literary works of art. The primary theme is a parallel to the aspect of the Prometheus myth which concentrates on the creation of man by the Titans, transferred and made contemporary by Shelley for British audiences of her time. The subject is that of the creation of life by a scientist, thus bestowing life through the application and technology of medical science rather than by the natural acts of reproduction. The short novel has been adapted into many films and productions ranging from the early versions with Boris Karloff to later versions including Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film adaptation.


title: Prometheus

text: Franz Kafka wrote a short piece titled "Prometheus," outlining what he saw as his perspective on four aspects of this myth:


title: Prometheus

text:
"According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.
 According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
 According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.
 According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.
There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable."


title: Prometheus

text: This short piece by Kafka concerning his interest in Prometheus was supplemented by two other mythological pieces written by him. As stated by Reiner Stach, "Kafka's world was mythical in nature, with Old Testament and Jewish legends providing the templates. It was only logical (even if Kafka did not state it openly) that he would try his hand at the canon of antiquity, re-interpreting it and incorporating it into his own imagination in the form of allusions, as in 'The Silence of the Sirens,' 'Prometheus,' and 'Poseidon.'" Among 20th century poets, Ted Hughes wrote a 1973 collection of poems titled "Prometheus on His Crag". The Nepali poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota (d. 1949) also wrote an epic titled "Prometheus" (प्रमीथस).


title: Prometheus

text: In his 1952 book, "Lucifer and Prometheus", Zvi Werblowsky presented the speculatively derived Jungian construction of the character of Satan in Milton's celebrated poem "Paradise Lost". Werblowsky applied his own Jungian style of interpretation to appropriate parts of the Prometheus myth for the purpose of interpreting Milton. A reprint of his book in the 1990s by Routledge Press included an introduction to the book by Carl Jung. Some Gnostics have been associated with identifying the theft of fire from heaven as embodied by the fall of Lucifer "the Light Bearer".


title: Prometheus

text: Ayn Rand cited the Prometheus myth in "Anthem", "The Fountainhead", and "Atlas Shrugged", using the mythological character as a metaphor for creative people rebelling against the confines of modern society.


title: Prometheus

text: The Eulenspiegel Society began the magazine "Prometheus" in the early 1970s; it is a decades-long-running magazine exploring issues important to kinksters, ranging from art and erotica, to advice columns and personal ads, to conversation about the philosophy of consensual kink. The magazine now exists online.


title: Prometheus

text: Prometheus has been depicted in a number of well-known artworks, including Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco's "Prometheus" fresco at Pomona College and Paul Manship's bronze sculpture "Prometheus" at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.


title: Prometheus

text: Works of classical music, opera, and ballet directly or indirectly inspired by the myth of Prometheus have included renderings by some of the major composers of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this tradition, the orchestral representation of the myth has received the most sustained attention of composers. These have included the symphonic poem by Franz Liszt titled "Prometheus" from 1850, among his other Symphonic Poems (No. 5, S.99). Alexander Scriabin composed "", Opus 60 (1910), also for orchestra. In the same year Gabriel Fauré composed his three-act opera "Prométhée" (1910). Charles-Valentin Alkan composed his "Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges'" (1847), with the 4th movement entitled "Prométhée enchaîné" (Prometheus Bound). Beethoven composed the score to a ballet version of the myth titled "The Creatures of Prometheus" (1801).


title: Prometheus

text: An adaptation of Goethe's poetic version of the myth was composed by Hugo Wolf, "Prometheus" ("Bedecke deinen Himmel, Zeus", 1889), as part of his Goethe-lieder for voice and piano, later transcribed for orchestra and voice. An opera of the myth was composed by Carl Orff titled "Prometheus" (1968), using Aeschylus' Greek language "Prometheia". A tradition has of course grown among critics of finding allusions to "Prometheus Bound" in Richard Wagner's "Ring cycle".


title: Prometheus

text: Rudolf Wagner-Régeny composed the Prometheus (opera) in 1959. Another work inspired by the myth, "Prometeo" (Prometheus), was composed by Luigi Nono between 1981 and 1984 and can be considered a sequence of nine cantatas. The libretto in Italian was written by Massimo Cacciari, and selects from texts by such varied authors as Aeschylus, Walter Benjamin and Rainer Maria Rilke and presents the different versions of the myth of Prometheus without telling any version literally.


title: Venus

text: Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never far from the Sun, either as morning star or evening star. Aside from the Sun and Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in Earth's sky, capable of casting visible shadows on Earth at dark conditions and being visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.


title: Venus

text: Venus is the second largest terrestrial object of the Solar System. It has a surface gravity slightly lower than on Earth and has a very weak induced magnetosphere. The atmosphere of Venus, mainly consists of carbon dioxide, and is the densest and hottest of the four terrestrial planets at the surface. With an atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface of about 92 times the sea level pressure of Earth and a mean temperature of , the carbon dioxide gas at Venus's surface is in the supercritical phase of matter. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, making it the planet with the highest albedo in the Solar System. It may have had water oceans in the past, but after these evaporated the temperature rose under a runaway greenhouse effect. The possibility of life on Venus has long been a topic of speculation but convincing evidence has yet to be found.


title: Venus

text: Like Mercury, Venus does not have any moons. Solar days on Venus, with a length of 117 Earth days, are just about half as long as its solar year, orbiting the Sun every 224.7 Earth days. This Venusian daylength is a product of it rotating against its orbital motion, halving its full sidereal rotation period of 243 Earth days, the longest of all the Solar System planets. Venus and Uranus are the only planets with such a retrograde rotation, making the Sun move in their skies from their western horizon to their eastern. The orbit of Venus around the Sun is the closest to Earth's orbit, allowing them to approach each other at inferior conjunction closer than any other planet, at a synodic period of 1.6 years, while Mercury approaches them more often the closest. The close orbit of Venus and Earth furthermore results in the lowest gravitational potential difference and lowest delta-v needed to transfer from them to any other planet.


title: Venus

text: This has made Venus a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth spacecrafts were sent to, starting with "Venera 1" in 1961, and the first planet to be reached, impacted and in 1970 successfully landed on by "Venera 7". As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, gaining its mainly used name from the Roman goddess of love and beauty which it is associated with. Furthermore it has been a prime inspiration for writers, poets and scholars. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BCE. Plans for better exploration with rovers or atmospheric missions, potentially crewed, at levels with almost Earth-like conditions have been proposed.


title: Venus

text: Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin". The diameter of Venus is —only less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen. The surface pressure is , and the average surface temperature is , above the critical points of both major constituents and making the surface atmosphere a supercritical fluid.


title: Venus

text: Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen—both exist as supercritical fluids at the planet's surface—and traces of other gases including sulfur dioxide. The mass of its atmosphere is 92 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 93 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is , 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at at sea level. The -rich atmosphere generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least . This makes the Venusian surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of and maximum surface temperature of , even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. Because of its runaway greenhouse effect, Venus has been identified by scientists such as Carl Sagan as a warning and research object linked to climate change on Earth.


title: Venus

text: Venus's atmosphere is extremely rich in primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth. This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact or accretion of a more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is also depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy to mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism.


title: Venus

text: Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding the early Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface. After a period of 600 million to several billion years, solar forcing from rising luminosity of the Sun caused the evaporation of the original water. A runaway greenhouse effect was created once a critical level of greenhouse gases (including water) was added to its atmosphere. Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the upper cloud layers of Venus, up from the surface, where the temperature ranges between but the environment is acidic. The putative detection of an absorption line of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere, with no known pathway for abiotic production, led to speculation in September 2020 that there could be extant life currently present in the atmosphere. Later research attributed the spectroscopic signal that was interpreted as phosphine to sulfur dioxide, or found that in fact there was no absorption line.


title: Venus

text: Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen.


title: Venus

text: Above the dense layer are thick clouds, consisting mainly of sulfuric acid, which is formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the clouds consist of approximately 1% ferric chloride. Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate, aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride. Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions. These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground. Strong winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days. Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed.


title: Venus

text: The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between the equator and the poles. Venus's minute axial tilt—less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimises seasonal temperature variation. Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about and an atmospheric pressure of about . In 1995, the "Magellan" spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).


title: Venus

text: Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019, astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.


title: Venus

text: The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes. In 2006–07, "Venus Express" clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements, the lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth, however other instruments have not detected lightning at all. The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from the clouds or volcanoes.


title: Venus

text: In 2007, "Venus Express" discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole. "Venus Express" also discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus. On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."


title: Venus

text: In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's "Akatsuki" mission observed bow shapes in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of the existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system.


title: Venus

text: The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. "Venera" landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks. The surface was mapped in detail by "Magellan" in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions.


title: Venus

text: About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains. Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is above the Venusian average surface elevation. The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.


title: Venus

text: The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, at 300–600million years old. Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called "farra", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from across, and from high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as "arachnoids"; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.


title: Venus

text: Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women. Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature.


title: Venus

text: The longitude of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio. After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne on Sedna Planitia.


title: Venus

text: The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than the surrounding basaltic plains measured by "Venus Express" and "Magellan", indicating a different, possibly a more felsic, mineral assemblage. The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics, implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus. However, the nature of tessera terrains is far from certain.


title: Venus

text: Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii. This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older and is not subject to the same erosion process. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about a hundred million years, whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600million years old.


title: Venus

text: Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulfur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold. This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions. It has also been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active, specifically the detection of olivine, a volcanic product that would weather quickly on the planet's surface.


title: Venus

text: In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by "Venus Express", in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma, near the shield volcano Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions. The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the range, relative to a normal temperature of .


title: Venus

text: Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event 300–600million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.


title: Venus

text: Venusian craters range from in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater. Incoming projectiles less than in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.


title: Venus

text: Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus. The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is most likely at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate, although a completely solid core cannot be ruled out. The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's. The predicted values for the moment of inertia based on planetary models suggest a core radius of 2,900–3,450 km. This is in line with the first observation-based estimate of 3,500 km.


title: Venus

text: The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.


title: Venus

text: In 1967, "Venera 4" found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind, rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core. Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.


title: Venus

text: The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo. This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This insulating effect would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead, the heat from the core is reheating the crust.


title: Venus

text: One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core, or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.


title: Venus

text: The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of water molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind could have led to the loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed. However, the planet may have retained a dynamo for its first 2–3 billion years, so the water loss may have occurred more recently. The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system.


title: Venus

text: Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about , and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is currently the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01. Simulations of the early solar system orbital dynamics have shown that the eccentricity of the Venus orbit may have been substantially larger in the past, reaching values as high as 0.31 and possibly impacting the early climate evolution. The current near-circular orbit of Venus means that when Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of .


title: Venus

text: The planet reaches at a orbital resonance of 8 Earth orbits to 13 Venus orbits, inferior conjunctions at a synodic period of 584 days, on average. Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than ; then, there are none for about 60,158 years. While Venus approaches Earth the closest, Mercury approaches Earth more often the closest of all planets. That said, Venus and Earth still have the lowest gravitational potential difference between them than to any other planet, needing the lowest delta-v to transfer between them, than to any other planet from them.


title: Venus

text: All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Because its rotation is so slow, Venus is very close to spherical. A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Venus's equator rotates at , whereas Earth's rotates at . Venus's rotation period measured with "Magellan" spacecraft data over a 500-day period is smaller than the rotation period measured during the 16-year period between the Magellan spacecraft and "Venus Express" visits, with a difference of about 6.5minutes. Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days — the 116-day figure is extremely close to the average number of days it takes Mercury to slip underneath the Earth in its orbit). One Venusian year is about 1.92Venusian solar days. To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east, although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface.


title: Venus

text: Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere, a change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere.


title: Venus

text: The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise), but the hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted.


title: Venus

text: Venus has no natural satellites. It has several trojan asteroids: the quasi-satellite and two other temporary trojans, and . In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over the following , but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago. About 10millionyears later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction and caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus. If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.


title: Venus

text: To the naked eye, Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun). The planet's mean apparent magnitude is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31. The brightest magnitude occurs during crescent phase about one month before or after inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun. The planet is bright enough to be seen in broad daylight, but is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet, it always lies within about 47° of the Sun.


title: Venus

text: Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun. As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported "unidentified flying object".


title: Venus

text: As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it. The phases are clearly visible in a 4" telescope.


title: Venus

text: Naked-eye observations of Venus during daylight hours exist in several anecdotes and records. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in the daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg. Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4March 1865. Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent.


title: Venus

text: The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about or —a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.


title: Venus

text: The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5–6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions.


title: Venus

text: The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 2117 and December 2125. The 1874 transit is the subject of the oldest film known, the 1874 "Passage de Venus". Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horrocks in 1639. Captain Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus.


title: Venus

text: The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat with a orbital resonance of 13:8 (Earth orbits eight times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.61538 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.61519 years. The pentagram of Venus is sometimes also referred to as the petals of Venus due to the path's visual similarity to a flower.


title: Venus

text: A long-standing mystery of Venus observations is the so-called ashen light—an apparent weak illumination of its dark side, seen when the planet is in the crescent phase. The first claimed observation of ashen light was made in 1643, but the existence of the illumination has never been reliably confirmed. Observers have speculated it may result from electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere, but it could be illusory, resulting from the physiological effect of observing a bright, crescent-shaped object. The ashen light has often been sighted when Venus is in the evening sky, when the evening terminator of the planet is towards to Earth.


title: Venus

text: Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as a single entity; instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star. Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period and the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa from the First Babylonian dynasty indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object. In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat. The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.


title: Venus

text: The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" ( ) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" ( ), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" ( ).


title: Venus

text: The ancient Greeks also initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star. Pliny the Elder credited the realization that they were a single object to Pythagoras in the sixth century BC, while Diogenes Laërtius argued that Parmenides was probably responsible for this discovery. Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper, both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.


title: Venus

text: In the second century, in his astronomical treatise "Almagest", Ptolemy theorized that both Mercury and Venus are located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century Persian astronomer Avicenna claimed to have observed the transit of Venus, which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory. In the 12th century, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi, though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.


title: Venus

text: When the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found it showed phases like the Moon, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. When Venus is furthest from the Sun in the sky, it shows a half-lit phase, and when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, it shows as a crescent or full phase. This could be possible only if Venus orbited the Sun, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the Solar System was concentric and centred on Earth.


title: Venus

text: The 1639 transit of Venus was accurately predicted by Jeremiah Horrocks and observed by him and his friend, William Crabtree, at each of their respective homes, on 4December 1639 (24 November under the Julian calendar in use at that time).


title: Venus

text: The atmosphere of Venus was discovered in 1761 by Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov. Venus's atmosphere was observed in 1790 by German astronomer Johann Schröter. Schröter found when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, American astronomer Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere. The atmosphere complicated efforts to determine a rotation period for the planet, and observers such as Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini and Schröter incorrectly estimated periods of about from the motions of markings on the planet's apparent surface.


title: Venus

text: Little more was discovered about Venus until the 20th century. Its almost featureless disc gave no hint what its surface might be like, and it was only with the development of spectroscopic, radar and ultraviolet observations that more of its secrets were revealed. The first ultraviolet observations were carried out in the 1920s, when Frank E. Ross found that ultraviolet photographs revealed considerable detail that was absent in visible and infrared radiation. He suggested this was due to a dense, yellow lower atmosphere with high cirrus clouds above it.


title: Venus

text: Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s gave the first clues about the Venusian rotation. Vesto Slipher tried to measure the Doppler shift of light from Venus, but found he could not detect any rotation. He surmised the planet must have a much longer rotation period than had previously been thought. Later work in the 1950s showed the rotation was retrograde. Radar observations of Venus were first carried out in the 1960s, and provided the first measurements of the rotation period, which were close to the modern value.


title: Venus

text: Radar observations in the 1970s revealed details of the Venusian surface for the first time. Pulses of radio waves were beamed at the planet using the radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, and the echoes revealed two highly reflective regions, designated the Alpha and Beta regions. The observations also revealed a bright region attributed to mountains, which was called Maxwell Montes. These three features are now the only ones on Venus that do not have female names.


title: Venus

text: The first robotic space probe mission to Venus and any planet was "Venera 1" of the Soviet Venera program launched in 1961, though it lost contact en route.


title: Venus

text: The first successful mission to Venus (as well as the world's first successful interplanetary mission) was the "Mariner 2" mission by the United States, passing on 14 December 1962 at above the surface of Venus and gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.


title: Venus

text: On 18 October 1967, the Soviet "Venera 4" successfully entered as the first to probe the atmosphere and deployed science experiments. "Venera 4" showed the surface temperature was hotter than "Mariner 2" had calculated, at almost , determined that the atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide (), and discovered that Venus's atmosphere was considerably denser than "Venera 4" designers had anticipated. The joint "Venera 4"–"Mariner 5" data were analysed by a combined Soviet–American science team in a series of colloquia over the following year, in an early example of space cooperation.


title: Venus

text: On 15 December 1970, "Venera 7" became the first spacecraft to soft land on another planet and the first to transmit data from there back to Earth.


title: Venus

text: In 1974, "Mariner 10" swung by Venus to bend its path toward Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speeds in the Venusian atmosphere. This was the first interplanetary gravity assist ever used, a technique which would be used by later probes, most notably "Voyager 1" and "2".


title: Venus

text: In 1975, the Soviet "Venera 9" and "10" landers transmitted the first images from the surface of Venus, which were in black and white. In 1982 the first colour images of the surface were obtained with the Soviet "Venera 13" and "14" landers.


title: Venus

text: NASA obtained additional data in 1978 with the Pioneer Venus project that consisted of two separate missions: Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe. The successful Soviet Venera program came to a close in October 1983, when "Venera 15" and "16" were placed in orbit to conduct detailed mapping of 25% of Venus's terrain (from the north pole to 30°N latitude)


title: Venus

text: Several other missions explored Venus in the 1980s and 1990s, including "Vega 1" (1985), "Vega 2" (1985), "Galileo" (1990), "Magellan" (1994), "Cassini–Huygens" (1998), and "MESSENGER" (2006). All except "Magellan" were gravity assists. Then, "Venus Express" by the European Space Agency (ESA) entered orbit around Venus in April 2006. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, "Venus Express" provided unprecedented long-term observation of Venus's atmosphere. ESA concluded the "Venus Express" mission in December 2014.


title: Venus

text: As of 2020, Japan's "Akatsuki" is in a highly eccentric orbit around Venus since 7December 2015, and there are several probing proposals under study by Roscosmos, NASA, ISRO, ESA, and the private sector (e.g. by Rocketlab).


title: Venus

text: Venus is a primary feature of the night sky, and so has been of remarkable importance in mythology, astrology and fiction throughout history and in different cultures.


title: Venus

text: In Sumerian religion, Inanna was associated with the planet Venus. Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess of the planet Venus. Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky. The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature. In "Inanna's Descent to the Underworld", unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East. An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for "Kur", what could be presumed to be, the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West. In "Inanna and Shukaletuda" and "Inanna's Descent into the Underworld" appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus. In "Inanna and Shukaletuda", Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons. In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.


title: Venus

text: Classical poets such as Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Virgil spoke of the star and its light. Poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth wrote odes to it.


title: Venus

text: In Chinese the planet is called Jīn-xīng (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. In India Shukra Graha ("the planet Shukra") is named after the powerful saint Shukra. "Shukra" which is used in Indian Vedic astrology means "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras. The word "Shukra" is also associated with semen, or generation. Venus is known as Kejora in Indonesian and Malaysian Malay. Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (), based on the Five elements.


title: Venus

text: The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it "Chac ek", or "Noh Ek"<nowiki>'</nowiki>, "the Great Star". The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar and were described in some of their books such as "Maya Codex of Mexico" and "Dresden Codex."


title: Venus

text: The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed Venus to be two separate bodies, a morning star and an evening star. The Egyptians knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti. The Greeks used the names "Phōsphoros" (Φωσϕόρος), meaning "light-bringer" (whence the element phosphorus; alternately "Ēōsphoros" (Ἠωσϕόρος), meaning "dawn-bringer"), for the morning star, and "Hesperos" (Ἕσπερος), meaning "Western one", for the evening star. Though by the Roman era they were recognized as one celestial object, known as "the star of Venus", the traditional two Greek names continued to be used, though usually translated to Latin as "Lūcifer" and "Vesper".


title: Venus

text: With the invention of the telescope, the idea that Venus was a physical world and possible destination began to take form.


title: Venus

text: The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans. The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions. Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be quite different and brought this particular genre to an end. As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors tried to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.


title: Venus

text: The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath. The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper. Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess although that is unlikely to be its true origin. In the Greek Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 235, the symbols for Venus and Mercury didn't have the cross-bar on the bottom stroke.


title: Venus

text: Speculation on the possibility of life on Venus's surface decreased significantly after the early 1960s when it became clear that the conditions are extreme compared to those on Earth. Venus's extreme temperature and atmospheric pressure make water-based life as currently known unlikely.


title: Venus

text: Some scientists have speculated that thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms might exist in the cooler, acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere). Such speculations go back to 1967, when Carl Sagan and Harold J. Morowitz suggested in a "Nature" article that tiny objects detected in Venus's clouds might be organisms similar to Earth's bacteria (which are of approximately the same size):


title: Venus

text: In August 2019, astronomers led by Yeon Joo Lee reported that long-term pattern of absorbance and albedo changes in the atmosphere of the planet Venus caused by "unknown absorbers", which may be chemicals or even large colonies of microorganisms high up in the atmosphere of the planet, affect the climate. Their light absorbance is almost identical to that of micro-organisms in Earth's clouds. Similar conclusions have been reached by other studies.


title: Venus

text: In September 2020, a team of astronomers led by Jane Greaves from Cardiff University announced the likely detection of phosphine, a gas not known to be produced by any known chemical processes on the Venusian surface or atmosphere, in the upper levels of the planet's clouds. One proposed source for this phosphine is living organisms. The phosphine was detected at heights of at least 30 miles above the surface, and primarily at mid-latitudes with none detected at the poles. The discovery prompted NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine to publicly call for a new focus on the study of Venus, describing the phosphine find as "the most significant development yet in building the case for life off Earth".


title: Venus

text: Subsequent analysis of the data-processing used to identify phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus has raised concerns that the detection-line may be an artefact. The use of a 12th-order polynomial fit may have amplified noise and generated a false reading (see Runge's phenomenon). Observations of the atmosphere of Venus at other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in which a phosphine absorption line would be expected did not detect phosphine. By late October 2020, re-analysis of data with a proper subtraction of background did not show a statistically significant detection of phosphine.


title: Venus

text: The Committee on Space Research is a scientific organization established by the International Council for Science. Among their responsibilities is the development of recommendations for avoiding interplanetary contamination. For this purpose, space missions are categorized into five groups. Due to the harsh surface environment of Venus, Venus has been under the planetary protection category two. This indicates that there is only a remote chance that spacecraft-borne contamination could compromise investigations.


title: Venus

text: Venus is the place of the very first interplanetary human presence, mediated through robotic missions, with the first successful landings on another planet and extraterrestrial body other than the Moon. Venus was at the beginning of the space age frequently visited by space probes until the 1990s. Currently in orbit is Akatsuki, and the Parker Solar Probe routinely uses Venus for gravity assist maneuvers.


title: Venus

text: The only nation that has sent lander probes to the surface of Venus has been the Soviet Union, which has been used by Russian officials to call Venus a "Russian planet".


title: Venus

text: While the surface conditions of Venus are very inhospitable, the atmospheric pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface. With this in mind the Soviet engineer Sergey Zhitomirskiy (Сергей Житомирский, 1929–2004) in 1971 and more contemporarily NASA aerospace engineer Geoffrey A. Landis in 2003 suggested the use of aerostats for crewed exploration and possibly for permanent "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere, an alternative to the popular idea of living on planetary surfaces such as Mars. Among the many engineering challenges for any human presence in the atmosphere of Venus are the corrosive amounts of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere.


title: Venus

text: The High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) by NASA is a mission concept that proposed a crewed aerostat design.


title: Melbourne

text: Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: "Narrm" or "Naarm") is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metropolitan area known as Greater Melbourne, comprising an urban agglomeration of 31 local municipalities, although the name is also used specifically for the local municipality of City of Melbourne based around its central business area. The metropolis occupies much of the northern and eastern coastlines of Port Phillip Bay and spreads into the Mornington Peninsula, part of West Gippsland, as well as the hinterlands towards the Yarra Valley, the Dandenong and Macedon Ranges. It has a population over 5 million (19% of the population of Australia, as per 2021 census), mostly residing to the east side of the city centre, and its inhabitants are commonly referred to as "Melburnians".


title: Melbourne

text: The area of Melbourne has been home to Aboriginal Victorians for over 40,000 years and serves as an important meeting place for local Kulin nation clans. Of the five peoples of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land encompassing Melbourne are the Boonwurrung, Wathaurong and the Wurundjeri peoples. A short-lived penal settlement was built at Port Phillip, then part of the British colony of New South Wales, in 1803, but it was not until 1835, with the arrival of free settlers from Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania), that Melbourne was founded. It was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837, and named after the then British Prime Minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. In 1851, four years after Queen Victoria declared it a city, Melbourne became the capital of the new colony of Victoria. During the 1850s Victorian gold rush, the city entered a lengthy boom period that, by the late 1880s, had transformed it into one of the world's largest and wealthiest metropolises. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it served as the interim seat of government of the new nation until Canberra became the permanent capital in 1927. Today, it is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region and ranks 32nd globally in the March 2022 Global Financial Centres Index.