yknow how venus appears to aeneas in book 1 of the aeneid and she's pretending to be a huntress and aeneas gets so upset when he realizes who she is and demands to know why she never appears to him just as herself

but like. what if that was her way of trying to make him feel at home, and it simply didn't work? after all, he was raised by nymphs in the mountain; would he not feel more connection to a maiden with her tunic high above her knees and her hair tied back with flowers than a matron? would it not remind him of the days before he walked priam's halls, where he ran free through the groves? of course his mother cannot appear to him as herself- the gods rarely do- but born from the sea as she was, she has little reference for what might comfort a mortal man run ragged by fate's course. in many ways the venus of the aeneid is thrown into the role of a mother in a way that the aphrodite of the iliad never had to consider. i can only think of her trying her best to remind her son of the first mothers he had, not knowing in her godhood that he would long to see her face and lay his head on her lap as any other son of mortals would