![P644-074 [tobacco : UK] John Player "Egyptian Kings & Queens and Classical Deities" (March 1912?) 24/25](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2022-02/16%20venus.jpg?itok=26wSuw2g)
This shows Venus, the Roman goddess of Love and of victory.
She came from the sea, and never actually existed, but rather oddly Julius Caesar is said to have thought he was related to her.
Even odder, she actually appeared in Greek myth, as Aphrodite, first, and she was borrowed then, from legends of the early Assyrians, where she was called Astarte. Her son, Cupid, will be the subject of tomorrow`s card. As Aphrodite, she had another son, called Aenas, who was involved in the Trojan Wars, and appears in the Iliad. His father was a human, a shepherd, and this meant he was born human too, much to his mother`s distress.
In our original John Player Reference Book, RB.17, issued in 1950 and written by a committee headed by Edward Wharton-Tigar MBE, it tells us that these are "small cards, fronts in colour. Backs in blue, with descriptive text. Home Issue, March 1912".
However in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, six years later, this description had been shortened to "Sm. Nd. (25)" , and the same description was carried forward to our updated version.
There seems some confusion as to when it was issued, for it is usually recorded as March 1912, a date which comes from our John Player Reference Book, but in the London Cigarette Card Company catalogue of 1950 it is dated as June 1911. In that volume, it was listed for sale at 6d. to 1/6d. a card, with sets available at £2