Venulus was an
ambassador sent by
Turnus of
Ardea to the
Greek heroDiomedes to request assistance in a war against
Aeneas. He appears as a character in
Vergil's Aeneid (in Books 8 and 11) and
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 14); in both
epics, he seems to serve as a proxy or counterpart of the goddess
Venus (Paschalis 288, Barchiesi 119), whose name is incorporated in his own. There is no evidence for his existence beyond (or prior to) the Aeneid and Metamorphoses.
References
Barchiesi, A. (1999) "Venus' Masterplot: Ovid and the Homeric Hymns," in P. Hardie, A. Barchiesi, and S. Hinds (eds) Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid's Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume no. 23). 112–26.
Paschalis, M. (1997) Virgil's Aeneid: Semantic Relations and Proper Names. Oxford: Clarendon Press.