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An Ancient Latin Name for Venus

Venus, in its aspect as the Morning Star, was known to the early Romans
as /iubar/; not until much later did /Lucifer,/ ?the bringer of light,?
replace /iubar/ as the designation of the planet Venus in its morning
aspect.^1 <#1> Latin writers derived /iubar/ from the word /iuba,
/meaning ?hair.? Varro wrote: /eadem Stella vocatur iubar quod iubata/
?this star is called /iubar/ bacause it is hairy.?^2 <#2> Varro and
Festus compared the Morning Star?s hair to a lion?s mane.^3 <#3> / /The
image would appear to be that of light scattered in all directions: only
some poetic hyperbole could see in today?s bright morning star a hairy
apparition resembling a lion?s mane.^4 <#4>

Seneca and Pliny used the word /iubar/ to describe a comet in the sense
of a star with hair.^5 <#5> Modern scholars, however, unable to see how
the word ?hairy? could possibly be applied to Venus, have sought for
different etymologies /of iubar,/ for ?the morning star does not appear
as a luminous trail, but as a point lightly twinkling.?^6 <#6> True, it
does not now so appear; but that hardly gives us license to reject the
ancients? description of Venus as having been hairy /(iubata)/ in an
earlier age.

*References*

# /Iubar dicitur Stella Lucifer/?Varro, /De lingua latina/ VI.6.
# /Ibid.,/ loc. cit.
# //Varro: /Quod habet luminem diffusum ut leo in capite iubam - De
lingua latina/ VII. 76; Festus: /Quod splendor eius diffunditur in
modum iubae leonis (On the Meaning of Words /92.13).
# // For the association of the lion with the Morning Star. see
F.-X. /Kugler?s Sibyllinischer Sternkampf und Phaëthon in
naturgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung/ (1927). Beginning with a passage
in the /Sibylline Oracles/ (V. 51 6), Kugler traces the
association through the literary and artistic traditions of the
ancient Near East./
/
# //Seneca, /Octavia/ 231: /vidimus caelo iubar ardens cometem
pandere infestam facem?/apparently in reterence to the comet of
A.D. 60. Cf. Pliny,. /Natural History/ II.xxiii. 91.
# //André le Boeuffle, /Les noms latins d?astres et de
constellations/ (Paris, 1977), pp. 238-239, ii. 6. The word
/iubar/ was also used in Latin to designate the light of the Sun,
Moon, and other celestial bodies.

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