page_title: Aura (mythology)
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Aura (mythology) / Iconography
caption_attribution_description: English: On the eastern side of Ara Pacis is a relief of Tellus Mater, the Roman earth-goddess Nederlands: Aan de oostelijke kant van Ara Pacis is een afbeelding te zien van Tellus Mater (moeder Aarde). De sluier verwijst naar Ceres, het afvallend gewaad naar Venus. Moeder Aarde wordt geflankeerd door de personificaties van land- en zeewind. Dit symboliseert de vrede onder Augustus ter land en ter zee. Français&#160;: Bas-relief de la Terre-Mère, Tellus Mater, sur la façade orientals de l'Ara Pacis (entre 13 et 9 av. J.-C.)
context_page_description: In Greek and Roman mythology, Aura is a minor deity, whose name means "breeze". The plural form, Aurae is sometimes found. According to Nonnus, Aura was the daughter of the Titan Lelantos and the mother, by Dionysus, of Iacchus, a minor deity connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, while Quintus Smyrnaeus makes the Aurae daughters of Boreas, the North-wind. Aurae was the title of a play by the Athenian comic poet Metagenes, who was contemporary with Aristophanes, Phrynichus, and Plato.
context_section_description: Extant images of Aura from antiquity are rare. There are only two which can be identified as Aura by inscription.  The oldest is a fifth-century BC skyphos from Taranto, now in the Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney (53.30), which shows a figure labeled "Aura", seated on a rock by the sea, with velificatio, a billowing garment that forms an arch overhead. The other is found on a volute-krater funerary vase (c. 370–350 BC), now in the British Museum (F277).  Depicted on its neck is a polos-crowned head with curls, and the inscription "Aura" above the polos crown.
  Pliny describes two statues of Aurae with velificantes sua veste, "spreading their cloaks like sails", at the Porticus Octaviae in Rome. Influenced by Pliny's description, a pair of velificantes (figures framed by a velificatio) that appear on the Ara Pacis Augustae ("Altar of Augustan Peace") have often been identified as Aurae, although this identification has been criticized, and many other identications have been proposed.
  Aurae can resemble Nereids, from whom they are distinguishable mainly by the absence of marine imagery. The female figures with  wind-blown drapery, which adorned the Nereid Monument at Xanthos, though usually identified as Nereids, have sometimes been identified as Aurae.
  Aura is sometimes identified as the female figure carried by Zephyr in Sandro Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus.
caption: A pair of velificantes – possibly Aurae – on the Ara Pacis (late 1st century BC). Between them is Tellus Mater.
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