Veritas

In Roman mythology, Veritas (Classical Latin: [ˈweː.rɪ.t̪aːs]), meaning Truth, is the Goddess of Truth, a daughter of Saturn (called Cronus by the Greeks, the Titan of Time, perhaps first by Plutarch) and the mother of Virtus. She is also sometimes considered the daughter of Jupiter (called Zeus by the Greeks), or a creation of Prometheus. The elusive goddess is said to have hidden in the bottom of a holy well. She is depicted both as a virgin dressed in white and as the "naked truth" (nuda veritas) holding a hand mirror. The equivalent Greek goddess is Aletheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀλήθεια). Veritas was the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main virtues any good Roman should possess. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger argues that the truth represented by aletheia (which essentially means "unconcealment") is different from that represented by veritas, which is linked to a Roman understanding of rightness and finally to a Nietzschean sense of justice and a will to power. In Western culture, the word may also serve as a motto.