can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue. Varro's theology identifies Venus with water as an aspect of the female principle. To generate life, the watery matrix of the womb requires the virile warmth of fire. To sustain life, water and fire must be balanced; excess of either one, or their mutual antagonism, are unproductive or destructive. Prospective brides offered Venus a gift "before the wedding"; the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. The wedding ceremony itself, and the state of lawful marriage, belonged to Juno – whose mythology allows her only a single marriage, and no divorce from her habitually errant spouse, Jupiter – but Venus and Juno are also likely "bookends" for the ceremony; Venus prepares the bride for "conubial bliss" and expectations of fertility within lawful marriage. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus; it is unclear where the offering is made, and others say this gift is to the Lares. In dice-games played with knucklebones, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as "Venus". Epithets Like other major Roman deities, Venus was given a number of epithets that referred to her different cult aspects, roles, and her functional similarities to other deities. Her "original powers seem to have been extended largely by the fondness of the Romans for folk-etymology, and by the prevalence of the religious idea nomen-omen which sanctioned any identifications made in this way." Venus Acidalia, in Virgil's Aeneid (1.715–22, as mater acidalia). Servius speculates this "rare" and "strangely recondite epithet" as reference to a mooted "Fountain of Acidalia" (fons acidalia) where the Graces (Venus' daughters) were said to bathe; but he also connects it to the Greek word for "dart", "needle", "arrow", whence "love's arrows" and love's bitter "cares and pangs". Ovid uses acidalia only in the latter sense. Venus Acidalia is likely a literary conceit, formed by Virgil from earlier usages in which acidalia had no evident connection to Venus. It was almost certainly not a cultic epithet. Venus Anadyomene (Venus "rising from the sea"), based on a once-famous painting by the Greek artist Apelles showing the birth of Aphrodite from sea-foam, fully adult and supported by