Green is a colour that is universally known as representing nature and the environment. It is also the color of growth, renewal and rebirth. However, green also forebode death. In Egyptian wall paintings, Osiris, the ruler of the underworld, was typically portrayed with a green face. In Ancient Greece, green is associated with Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. For the Romans, green was the color of Venus who, despite being the Roman counterpart of the Greek Aphrodite, also served as the goddess of the gardens, vegetables and vineyards. The Roman poet Lucretius ( c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC) opens his didactic poem De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”) by addressing Venus as a mother of nature and a personified symbol for nature’s generative aspect.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://martinifisher.com/2021/02/01/the-colour-green-the-earth-and-the-goddesses/