The work depicts the union of Mars and Venus, a popular motif in philosophy and the arts. In the Greek myth, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite had been exposed to ridicule when her husband Hephaestus (whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan) caught them in the act by means of magical snare. Scenes of Mars and Venus in Roman art often ignore the adulterous implications of their union; if anything, the relationship was romanticised. In funerary art, husbands and wives would have themselves portrayed as the passionate divine couple.