Look. This is Venus, — she says, pointing at the bright slightly pulsating dot on the sky.
Good thing about her is that once every 584 days she floats as close to Earth as she can and you can see her even in the city. Today’s that day. Today she’s as bright as you can see her from the Earth.
Venus is one of the episode’s thematic anchor’s, both the planet that bookends the night (visible at dusk as the evening star and dissolving at dawn), the headless goddess in the piazza fountain, and, well, the mythical queen ruling the episode.
Over eight Earth years (2,922 days), Venus completes roughly 13 orbits around the Sun (13 x 224.7 days ≈ 2,921 days). During those eight years, Venus passes between Earth and the Sun five times. These five points of closest approach, plotted against the zodiac, trace a near-perfect pentagram, sometimes called the “Rose of Venus.” The pattern shifts by roughly 2° every eight years, completing a full rotation over about 1,200 years. When we plot Venus’s geocentric orbit (its position relative to Earth over those eight years) the five loops of closest approach produce a five-petalled flower, the trace of its dance around us. The ancient Babylonian Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa — a 7th-century BC cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, copied from observations dating to c. 1650 BC — records Venus’s risings and settings over 21 years, making it the oldest surviving planetary astronomical text. The pentagram was Inanna’s sign, the Sumerian goddess who was Venus, whom the Akkadians called Ishtar, and five-pointed cuneiform star represented her orbit.
In the middle of the piazza is a fountain with a statue of Venus. The statue has no head, the head has no eyes and no mouth, the figure has no hands and the hands have no fingers, it has no legs, no torso, nothing, the statue doesn’t even have itself, but it’s still there, visible, looming a few metres high over the piazza, dropping its shadow in all directions, overlooking the paused fountain, now filled with coins from all around the world — tributes to the goddess of love.
