Acidalia is an epithet of Venus known from Vergil’s Aeneid, after the spring called Akidalia in Orkhomenos, Greece.

Orkhomenos in Boeotia, Greece, was home to the worship of the Kharites (also known as the Graces), the three attendants of Aphrodite Who embodied grace, joy, merriment, and mirth. Orkhomenos, which has been inhabited since Neolithic times, was traditionally the first place to honor the Kharites, in the form of three stones said to have fallen from heaven. The temple of the Kharites was the oldest temple in Orkhomenos, and was host to the Kharitesia, a festival held to celebrate Them with dancing, poetry, and song.

Today the church of Panagia Skripou is built on what was probably the site of the Kharites’ temple; not 1000 feet downhill from that site is the spring of Akidalia, sacred to the Kharites (and still known by that name on modern satellite maps), and where They, with Aphrodite, were said to bathe.

Vergil calls Venus Mater Acidalia, implying that She is the mother of the Kharites, though in Greek myth Hera is usually said to be Their mother. As Orkhomenos was where the Kharites were first honored in days long past, perhaps Vergil is attempting to co-opt some of that ancient patina to serve for Rome, too, by connecting Venus, the foremother of Rome, to that ancient tradition.

Servius (the 4th-5th century philologist, not the King), connects the name ‘Acidalia’ to a Greek word meaning ‘needle’ or ‘arrow’, which he then associates with the arrows of Cupid (Eros), that can cause sharp love-pangs. Modern scholarship seems to think that a bit of a reach; at any rate, Vergil is the only one to use the epithet Acidalia of Venus, and he is probably the first to connect the two.

Still, Venus Acidalia can be said to be Venus as the mother of the Graces.