Editing The Birth of Venus (section)

===Literary sources===
[[File:Aphrodite Anadyomene from Pompeii cropped.jpg|thumb|Roman fresco from the "House of Venus" in [[Pompeii]], 1st century AD]]
The closest precedent for the scene is generally agreed to be in one of the early ancient Greek [[Homeric Hymns]], published in Florence in 1488 by the Greek refugee [[Demetrios Chalkokondyles]]:

:::Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful
:::[[Aphrodite]] I shall sing to whose domain
:::belong the battlements of all sea-loved
:::Cyprus where, blown by the moist breath
:::of Zephyros, she was carried over the
:::waves of the resounding sea on soft foam.
:::The gold-filleted Horae happily welcomed
:::her and clothed her with heavenly raiment.<ref>Mack, 2005, 85–86; Lightbown, 160</ref>

This poem was probably already known to Botticelli's Florentine contemporary, and [[Lorenzo di Medici]]'s court poet, [[Angelo Poliziano]].  The [[iconography]] of ''The Birth of Venus'' is similar to a description of a [[relief]] of the event in Poliziano's poem the ''Stanze per la giostra'', commemorating a Medici [[joust]] in 1475, which may also have influenced Botticelli, although there are many differences.  For example, Poliziano talks of multiple Horae and zephyrs.<ref>Lightbown, 159–160; ''Stanze de Messer Angelo Poliziano cominciate per la giostra del magnifico Giuliano di Pietro de Medici,'' I 99, 101, trans. David L. Quint, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1979.</ref>  Older writers, following Horne, posited that "his patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco asked him to paint a subject illustrating the lines",<ref>Clark, 97 quoted; see also Ettlingers, 134</ref> and that remains a possibility, though one difficult to maintain so confidently today.  Another poem by Politian speaks of Zephyr causing flowers to bloom, and spreading their scent over the land, which probably explains the roses he blows along with him in the painting.<ref>Hemsoll, 7:40</ref>