VENUS

   1) the Roman goddess of love, of wedded love, and of beauty (originally of the spring), and at length identified with the Greek APHRODITE (q.v.); she was regarded as the tutelary goddess of Rome, and had a temple to her honour in the Forum.

   2) an interior planet of the solar system, revolving in an orbit outside that of Mercury and within that of the earth, nearly as large as the latter; is 67 millions of miles from the sun, round which it revolves in 224 days, while it takes 23¼ hours to rotate on its own axis; it is the brightest of the heavenly bodies, and appears in the sky now as the morning star, now as the evening star, according as it rises before the sun or sets after it, so that it is always seen either in the E. or the W.; when right between us and the sun it is seen moving as a black spot on the sun's disk, a phenomenon known as "Transit of Venus," the last instance of which occurred in 1882, and that will not occur again till after 105½ years.