Never made attractive in Homer.
Again, there is not, throughout the Odyssey or Iliad, a single description of the beauty of Venus, such as Homer has given us of the dress of Juno, or the arms of Minerva. It is never, either directly or indirectly, set off for the purpose of creating interest and favour. One exception may perhaps be alleged: but, if it is such, at least it affords the most marked illustration of the rule. Once he does praise the exceeding beauteous neck, the lovely breast, the sparkling eyes of Venus; but it is when he has clothed her in the withered form of the aged spinstress that had attended upon Helen from Sparta, and through whose uninviting exterior such glimpses of the latent shape of Venus are caught by Helen as to enable her, but no one else, to recognise the deity.
How different is this from the case of Virgil, who has introduced a most beautiful and winning description of her in the Second Æneid[490], just when he brings her into action that she may acquit both Helen and Paris of all responsibility for the fall of Troy. It would have been not only natural for Homer, but, unless he was restrained by some strong reason, we may almost say it would have been inevitable, that he should have done for Venus what has been done in our own day, with very high classical effect, by Tennyson in his Œnone:
Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,
Fresh as the foam, new bathed in Paphian wells,
With rosy slender fingers backward drew
From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair
Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat
And shoulder: from the violets her light foot
Shone rosy-white, and o’er her rounded form