Juno (mythology)
Encyclopedia
Juno (ˈjuːnoː) is an ancient Roman goddess
, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn
and sister (but also the wife) of the chief god Jupiter
and the mother of Mars
and Vulcan
. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera
. As the patron goddess of Rome
and the Roman Empire
she was called Regina ("queen") and, together with Jupiter and Minerva
, was worshipped as a triad on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome.
Juno's own warlike aspect among the Romans is apparent in her attire. She often appeared sitting pictured with a peacock armed and wearing a goatskin cloak. The traditional depiction of this warlike aspect was assimilated from the Greek goddess Athena
, whose goatskin was called the 'aegis'.
.
Iuuen- is related to Latin aevum and Greek aion
(αιών) through a common Indo-European root
referring to a concept of vital energy or "fertile time." The iuvenis is he who has the fullness of vital force. In some inscriptions Jupiter himself is called Iuuntus, and one of the epithets of Jupiter is Ioviste, a superlative form
of iuuen- meaning "the youngest." Iuventas, "Youth," was one of two deities who "refused" to leave the Capitol when the building of the new Temple of Capitoline Jove required the exauguration of deities who already occupied the site. These data show the intrinsic relationship between Jupiter and Juno and a common founding idea in their theology.
Ancient etymologies associated Juno's name with iuvare, "to aid, benefit", and iuvenescendo, "rejuvenate," sometimes connecting it to the renewal of the new and waxing moon, perhaps implying the idea of a moon goddess.
s, names and titles representing various aspects and roles of the goddess. In accordance with her central role as a goddess of marriage, these included Pronuba and Cinxia ("she who looses the bride's girdle"). However, other epithets of Juno have wider implications and are less thematically linked.
While her connection with the idea of vital force, fulness of vital energy, eternal youthfulness is now generally acknowledged, the multiplicity and complexity of her personality have given rise to various and sometimes irreconcilable interpretations among modern scholars.
Juno is certainly the divine protectress of the community, who shows both a sovereign and a fertility character, often associated with a military one. She was present in many towns of ancient Italy: at Lanuvium
as Sespeis Mater Regina, Laurentum
, Tibur, Falerii
, Veii
as Regina, at Tibur and Falerii as Regina and Curitis, Tusculum
and Norba
as Lucina. She is also attested at Praeneste, Aricia, Ardea, Gabii
. In five Latin towns a month was named after Juno (Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Praeneste, Tibur). Outside Latium in Campania
at Teanum she was Populona (she who increase the number of the people or, in K. Latte's understanding of the iuvenes, the army), in Umbria
at Pisaurum Lucina, at Terventum in Samnium
Regina, in at Pisarum Regina Matrona, at Aesernia in Samnium Regina Populona. In Rome she was since the most ancient times named Lucina, Mater and Regina. It is debated whether she was also known as Curitis before the evocatio of the Juno of Falerii: this though seems probable.
Other epithets of hers that were in use at Rome include Moneta and Caprotina, Tutula, Fluonia or Fluviona, Februalis, the last ones associated with the rites of purification and fertility of February.
Her various epithets thus show a complex of mutually interrelated functions that in the view of G. Dumezil and V. Basanoff can be traced back to the Indoeuropean trifunctional ideology: as Regina and Moneta she is a sovereign deity, as Sespeis, Curitis (spear holder) and Moneta (again) she is an armed protectress, as Mater and Curitis (again) she is a goddess of the fertility and wealth of the community in her association with the curiae.
The epithet Lucina is particularly revealing since it reflects two interrelated aspects of the function of Juno: cyclical renewal of time in the waning and waxing of the moon and protection of delivery and birth (as she who brings to light the newborn as vigour, vital force). The ancient called her Covella in her function of helper in the labours of the new moon. The view that she was also a Moon goddess though is no longer accepted by scholars, as such a role belongs to Diana
Lucifera: through her association with the moon she governed the feminine physiological functions, menstrual cycle and pregnancy: as a rule all lunar deities are deities of childbirth. These aspects of Juno mark the heavenly and worldly sides of her function. She is thus associated to all beginnings and hers are the kalendae of every month: at Laurentum she was known as Kalendaris Iuno (Juno of the Kalends
). At Rome on the Kalends of every month the pontifex
minor invoked her, under the epithet Covella, when from the curia Calabra announced the date of the nonae. On the same day the regina sacrorum sacrificed to Juno a white sow or lamb in the Regia
. She is closely associated with Janus
, the god of passages and beginnings who after her is often named Iunonius.
Some scholars view this concentration of multiple functions as a typical and structural feature of the goddess, inherent to her being an expression of the nature of femininity. Other though prefer to dismiss her aspects of femininity and fertility and stress only her quality of being the spirit of youthfulness, liveliness and strength, regardless of sexual connexions, which would then change according to circumstances: thus in men she incarnates the iuvenes, word often used to design soldiers, hence resulting in a tutelary deity of the sovereignty of peoples; in women capable of bearing children, from puberty on she oversees childbirth and marriage. Thence she would be a poliad goddess related to politics, power and war. Other think her military and poliadic qualities arise from her being a fertility goddess who through her function of increasing the numbers of the community became also associated to political and military functions.
The rites of the month of February and the Nonae Caprotinae of July 5 offer a depiction of the interrelated roles of the deity in the spheres of fertility, war, and regality.
February is a month of passages, of ends and beginnings, and as such the month of yearly universal purification and renewal. Ovid discusses the etymology of February at the beginning of book II of the Fasti, connecting it to februae, i.e. piamina, expiations. As the most important time of passage of the year it implies risks for the community that have to be averted: the risk of contamination brought about by the contact with the underworld. Juno is then present and active at the three most prominent and relevant times of the month: on the kalendae (the first), with the celebration of the dies natalis birthday, of Juno Sospita on the Palatine
, on 15th as Juno Lucina, inspirator and patroness of the Lupercalia
and as Lucina and at its end, on March 1, as the protectress of the Matronae and of the preservation of marriages: this day united into one three festivals as it was the kalendae of the month, the beginning of the new year and the birthday of Romulus (as well as the date of the commemoration of the appeasing role of women during the war between Romans and Sabines).
Juno as Sospita (the Saviour) is thus the goddess that defends and protects the Romans since the first day in this perilous time of passage. On the same day recurred the celebration at the lucus grove of Helernus, which Dumezil thinks was a god of vegetation
related to the cult of Carna
/Crane, a nymph who may be an image of Juno Sospita. The way this period should be dealt with came to a concrete acme on the 15 in the Lupercalia
: the rite was directly suggested to the Roman couples by Juno Lucina in her lucus on the Esquiline, and was considered to be a rite of periodical purification and fertility. It was perhaps also associated to the renewal of political power, as it may appear in the competition between the two groups of the Luperci
, the Fabii and the Quinctii, mythically associated to Remus and Romulus. This political valence is illustrated by the episode of Julius Caesar
who chose this occasion to enact the scene of his crowning by Mark Antony
and by the fact that he created a third group, the Luperci Iulii. This element would perhaps be the reason of the eulogy of Augustus at the beginning of book II of Ovid's Fasti: as the heir of Caesar he had indeed succeeded in his stepfather's plan. Here is then the sovereign function of Juno that is highlighted.
After Wissowa many scholars have remarked the similarity between the Juno of the Lupercalia and the Juno of Lanuvium Seispes Mater Regina as both are associated with the goat, symbol of fertility. But in essence there is unity between fertility, regality and purification. This unity is underlined by the role of Faunus
in the aetiologic story told by Ovid and the symbolic relevance of the Lupercal
: asked by the Roman couples at her lucus how to overcome the sterility that ensued the abduction of the Sabine women, Juno answered through a murmuring of leaves "Italidas matres sacer hircus inito" "That a sacred ram cover the Italic mothers".
February owes its name to the februae, lustrations, and the goat whose hide is used to make the whips of the Luperci
is named februum and amiculus Iunonis. The Juno of this day bears the epithet of Februalis, Februata, Februa. Februlis oversees the secundament of the placenta and is strictly associated to Fluvonia, Fluonia, goddess who retains the blood inside the body during pregnancy. While the protection of pregnancy is stressed by Duval, Palmer sees in Fluonia only the Juno of lustration in river water. Ovid devotes an excursus to the lustrative function of river water in the same place in which he explains the etymology of February.
A temple (aedes) of Juno Lucina was built in 375 BC in the grove sacred to the goddess from early times. It stood precisely on the Cispius
near the sixth shrine of the Argei
. probably not far west of the church of S. Prassede, where inscriptions relating to her cult have been found. The grove should have extended down the slope south of the temple. As Servius Tullius
ordered the gifts for the newborn to be placed in the treasury of the temple though it looks that another shrine stood there before 375 BC. In 190 BC the temple was struck by lightning, its gable and doors injured. The annual festival of the Matronalia
was celebrated here on March 1, day of the dedication of the temple.
A temple to Iuno Sospita was vowed by consul C. Cornelius Cethegus in 197 BC and dedicated in 194. By 90 BC the temple had fallen into disrepute: in that year it was stained by episodes of prostitution and a bitch delivered her puppies right beneath the statue of the goddess. By decree of the senate consul L. Iulius Caesar ordered its restoration. In his poem Fasti Ovid states the temple of Juno Sospita had become dilapidated to the extent of being no longer discernible "because of the injuries of time": this looks hardly possible as the restoration had happened no longer than a century earlier and relics of the temple exixst to-day. It is thence plausible that an older temple of Juno Sospita existed in Rome within the pomerium
, as Ovid says it was located near the temple of the Phrygian Mother (Cybele
), which stood on the western corner of the Palatine
. As a rule temples of foreign, imported gods stood without the pomerium.
This festival had a legendary aetiology in a particularly delicate episode of Roman history and also recurs at (or shortly after) a particular time of the year, that of the so called caprificatio when branches of wild fig trees were fastened to cultivated ones to promote insemination. The historical episode narrated by ancient sources concerns the siege of Rome by the Latin peoples that ensued the Gallic sack. The dictator of the Latins Livius Postumius from Fidenae
would have requested the Roman senate that the matronae and daughters of the most prominent families be surrendered to the Latins as hostages. While the senate was debating the issue a slave girl, whose Greek name was Philotis and Latin Tutela or Tutula proposed that she together with other slave girls would render herself up to the enemy camp pretending to be the wives and daughters of the Roman families. Upon agreement of the senate, the women dressed up elegantly and wearing golden jewellery reached the Latin camp. There they seduced the Latins into fooling and drinking: after they had fallen asleep they stole their swords. Then Tutela gave the convened signal to the Romans brandishing an ignited branch after climbing on the wild fig (caprificus) and hiding the fire with her mantle. The Romans then irrupted into the Latin camp killing the enemies in their sleep. The women were rewarded with freedom and a dowry at public expenses.
Dumezil in his Archaic Roman Religion had been unable to interpret the myth underlying this legendary event, later though he accepted the interpretation given by P. Drossart and published it in his Fêtes romaines d'été et d'automne, suivi par dix questions romaines in 1975 as Question IX. In folklore the wild fig tree is universally associated with sex because of its fertilising power, the shape of its fruits and the white viscous juice of the tree.
Basanoff has argued that the legend not only alludes to sex and fertility in its association with wildfig and goat but is in fact a summary of sort of all the qualities of Juno. As Juno Sespeis of Lanuvium Juno Caprotina is a warrior, a fertiliser and a sovereign protectress. In fact the legend presents a heroine, Tutela, who is a slightly disguised representation of the goddess: the request of the Latin dictator would mask an attempted evocatio of the tutelary goddess of Rome. Tutela indeed shows regal, military and protective traits, apart from the sexual ones. Moreover according to Basanoff these too (breasts, milky juice, genitalia, present or symbolised in the fig and the goat) in general, and here in particular, have an inherently apotropaic value directly related to the nature of Juno. The occasion of the feria, shortly after the poplifugia
, i.e. when the community is in its direst straits, needs the intervention of a divine tutelary goddess, a divine queen, since the king (divine or human) has failed to appear or has fled. Hence the customary battles under the wild figs, the scurrile language that bring together the second and third function. This festival would thus show a ritual that can prove the trifunctional nature of Juno.
Other scholars limit their interpretation of Caprotina to the sexual implications of the goat, the caprificus and the obscene words and plays of the festival.
and Tibur. Dumezil remarked that Juno Curitis "is represented and invoked at Rome under conditions very close to those we know about for Juno Seispes of Lanuvium
". Martianus Capella states she must be invoked by those who are involved in war. The hunt of the goat by stonethrowing at Falerii is described in Ovid Amores III 13, 16 ff. In fact the Juno Curritis of Falerii shows a complex articulated structure closely allied to the threefold Juno Seispes of Lanuvium.
Ancient etymologies associated the epithet with Cures
, with the Sabine word for spear curis, with currus cart, with Quirites, with the curiae, as king Titus Tatius dedicated a table to Juno in every curia, that Dionysius still saw.
Modern scholars have proposed the town of Currium or Curria, Quirinus
, *quir(i)s or *quiru, the Sabine word for spear and curia
. The *quiru- would design the sacred spear that gave the name to the primitive curiae. The discovery at Sulmona
of a sanctuary of Hercules
Curinus lends support to a Sabine origin of the epithet and of the cult of Juno in the curiae. The spear could also be the celibataris hasta (bridal spear) that in the marriage ceremonies was used to comb the bridegroom's hair as a good omen. Palmer views the rituals of the curiae devoted to her as a reminiscence of the origin of the curiae themselves in rites of evocatio, practise the Romans continued to use for Juno or her equivalent at later times as for Falerii, Veii
and Carthage
. Juno Curitis would then be the evoked deity after her admission into the curiae.
Juno Curitis had a temple on the Campus Martius
. Excavations in Largo di Torre Argentina have revealed four temple structures, one of whom (temple D or A) could be the temple of Juno Curitis. She shared her anniversary day with Juppiter Fulgur, who had an altar nearby.
As for the etymology Cicero gives the verb monēre warn, hence the Warner. Palmer accepts Cicero's etymology as a possibility while adding mons mount, hill, verb e-mineo and noun monile referred to the Capitol, place of her cult. Also perhaps a cultic term or even, as in her temple were kept the Libri Lintei
, monere would thence have the meaning of recording: Livius Andronicus
identifies her as Mnemosyne
.
Her dies natalis was on the kalendae of June. Her Temple on the summit of the Capitol was dedicted only in 348 BC by dictator L. Furius Camillus, presumably a son of the great Furius. Livy states he vowed the temple during a war against the Aurunci
. Modern scholars agree that the origins of the cult and of the temple were much more ancient. M. Guarducci considers her cult very ancient, identifying her with Mnemosyne as the Warner because of her presence near the auguraculum, her oracular character, her announcement of perils: she considers her as an introduction into Rome of the Hera
of Cuma dating to the VIII century. L. A. Mac Kay considers the goddess more ancient than her etymology on the testimony of Valerius Maximus
who states she was the Juno of Veii. The sacred geese of the Capitol were lodged in her temple: as they are recorded in the episode of the Gallic siege (ca. 396-390 BC) by Livy, the temple should have existed before Furius's dedication. Basanoff considers her to go back to the regal period: she would be the Sabine Juno who arrived at Rome through Cures
. At Cures she was the tutelary deity of the military chief: as such she is never to be found among Latins. This new quality is apparent in the location of her fanum, her name, her role: 1. her altar is located in the regia of Titus Tatius; 2. Moneta is, from monere, the Adviser: like Egeria
with Numa (Tatius's son in law) she is associated to a Sabine king; 3. In Dionysius of Halicarnassus
the altar-tables of the curiae are consecrated to Juno Curitis to justify the false etymology of Curitis from curiae: the tables would assure the presence of the tutelary numen of the king as an adviser within each curia, as the epithet itself implies. It can be assumed thence that Juno Moneta intervenes under warlike circumstances as associated to the sacral power of the king.
others think she is a new acquisition introduced to Rome after her evocatio from Veii.
Palmer thinks she is to be identified with Juno Populona of later inscriptions, a political and military poliadic deity who had in fact a place in the Capitoline temple and was intended to represent the Regina of the king. The date of her introduction, though ancient, would be uncertain; she should perhaps be identified with Hera
Basilea or as the queen of Jupiter Rex. The actual epithet Regina could though come from Veii. At Rome this epithet may have been applied to a Juno other than that of the temple on the Aventine built to lodge the evocated Veian Juno as the rex sacrorum
and his wife-queen were to offer a monthly sacrifice to Juno in the Regia. This might imply that the prerepublican Juno was royal.
J. Gagé dismisses these assumptions as groundless speculations as no Jupiter Rex is attested and in accord with Roe D'Albret stresses that at Rome no presence of a Juno Regina is mentioned before Marcus Furius Camillus
, while she is attested in many Etruscan and Latin towns. Before that time her Roman equivalent was Juno Moneta. Marcel Renard for his part considers her an ancient Roman figure since the title of the Veian Juno expresses a cultic reality that is close to and indeed presupposes the existence at Rome of an analogous character: as a rule it is the presence of an original local figure that may allow the introduction of the new one through evocatio. He agrees with Dumezil that we ignore whether the translation of the epithet is exhaustive and what Etruscan notion corresponded to the name Regina which itself is certainly an Italic title. This is the only instance of evocatio recorded by the annalistic tradition. However Renard considers Macrobius's authority reliable in his long list of evocationes on the grounds of an archaeological find at Isaura. Roe D'Albret underlines the role played by Camillus and sees a personal link between the deity and her magistrate. Similarly Dumezil has remarked the link of Camillus with Mater Matuta
. In his relationship to the goddess he takes the place of the king of Veii. Camillus's devotion to female deities Mater Matuta and Fortuna and his contemporary vow of a new temple to both Matuta and Iuno Regina hint to a degree of identity between them: this assumption has by chance been supported by the discovery at Pyrgi
of a bronze lamella which mentions together Uni
and Thesan
, the Etruscan Juno and Aurora, i.e. Mater Matuta. One can then suppose Camillus's simultaneous vow of the temples of the two goddesses should be seen in the light of their intrinsic association. Octavianus will repeat the same translation with the statue of the Juno of Perusia
in consequence of a dream
The fact that a goddess evoked in war and for political reasons receive the homage of women and that women continue to have a role in her cult is explained by Palmer as a foreign cult of feminine sexuality of Etruscan derivation. The persistence of a female presence in her cult through the centuries down to the lectisternium
of 217 BC, when the matronae collected money for the service, and to the times of Augustus during the ludi saeculares in the sacrifices to Capitoline Juno are proof of the resilience of this foreign tradition.
Gagé and D'Albret remark an accentuation of the matronal aspect of Juno Regina that led her to be the most matronal of the Roman goddesses by the time of the end of the republic. This fact raises the question of understanding why she was able of attracting the devotion of the matronae. Gagé traces back the phenomenon to the nature of the cult rendered to the Juno Regina of the Aventine in which Camillus played a role in person. The original devotion of the matronae was directed to Fortuna
. Camillus was devout to her and to Matuta, both matronal deities. When he brought Juno Regina from Veii the Roman women were already acquainted with many Junos, while the ancient rites of Fortuna were falling off. Camillus would have then have made a political use of the cult of Juno Regina to subdue the social conflicts of his times by attribuing to her the role of primordial mother.
Juno Regina had two temples (aedes) in Rome. The one dedicated by Furius Camillus in 392 BC stood on the Aventine: it lodged the wooden statue of the Juno transvected from Veii. It is mentioned several times by Livy in connexion with sacrifices offered in atonement of prodigia. It was restored by Augustus. Two inscriptions found near the church of S. Sabina indicate the approximate site of the temple, which corresponds with its place in the lustral procession of 207 BC, near the upper end of the Clivus Publicius. The day of the dedication and of her festival was September 1.
Another temple stood near the circus Flaminius
, vowed by consul Marcus Aemilius Lepdius in 187 BC during the war against the Ligures
and dedicated by himself as censor in 179 on December 23. It was connected by a porch with a temple of Fortuna perhaps that of Fortuna
Equestris. Its probable site according to Platner is just south of the porticus Pompeiana on the west end of circus Flaminius.
The Juno Cealestis of Carthage Tanit
was evoked according to Macrobius. She did not receive a temple in Rome: presumably her image was deposited in another temple of Juno (Moneta or Regina) and later transferred to the Colonia Junonia
founded by Caius Gracchus
. The goddess was once again transferred to Rome by emperor Elagabalus
.
. The Capitoline triad poses difficult interpretative problems. It looks peculiarly Roman, since there is no sure document of its existence elsewhere either in Latium or Etruria. A direct Greek influence is possible but it would be also plausible to consider it a local creation. Dumézil advanced the hypothesis it could be an ideological construction of the Tarquins to oppose new Latin nationalism, as it included the three gods that in the Iliad are enemies of Troy
. It is probable Latins had already accepted the legend of Aeneas as their ancestor. Among ancient sources indeed Servius states that according to the Etrusca Disciplina towns should have the three temples of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva at the end of three roads leading to three gates. Vitruvius
writes that the temples of these three gods should be located on the most elevated site, isolated from the other. To his Etruscan founders the meaning of this triad might have been related to peculiarly Etruscan ideas on the association of the three gods with the birth of Herakles and the siege of Troy, in which Minerva
plays a decisive role as a goddess of destiny along with the sovereign couple Uni Tinia.
In Latium are relatively well known the instances of Tibur, Falerii, Laurentum and Lanuvium.
At Tibur and Falerii their sacerdos was a male, called pontifex sacrarius, fact that has been seen as a proof of the relevance of the goddess to the whole society. In both towns she was known as Curitis, the spearholder, an armed protectress. The martial aspect of these Junos is conspicuous, quite as that of fecundity and regality: the last two look strictly interconnected: fertility guaranteed the survival of the community, peaceful and armed. Iuno Curitis is also the tutelary goddess of the curiae and of the new brides, whose hair was combed with the spear called caelibataris hasta as in Rome. In her annaual rites at Falerii youths and maiden clad in white bore in procession gifts to the goddess whose image was escorted by her priestesses. The idea of purity and virginity is stressed in Ovid's description. A she goat is sacrificed to her after a ritual hunting. She is then the patroness of the young soldiers and of brides.
At Lanuvium the goddes is known under the epithet Seispes Mater Regina. The titles themselves are a theological definition: she was a sovereign goddess, a martial goddess and a fertility goddess. Hence her flamen
was chosen by the highest local magistrate, the dictator, and since 388 BC the Roman consuls were required to offer sacrifices to her. Her sanctuary was famous, rich and powerful.
Her cult included the annual feeding of a sacred snake with barley cakes by virgin maidens. The snake dwelt in a deep cavern within the precinct of the temple on the arx of the city: the maidens approached the lair blindfolded. The snake was supposed to feed only on the cakes offered by chaste girls. The rite was aimed at ensuring agricultural fertility. The site of the temple as well as the presence of the snake show she was the tutelary goddess of the city, as Athena at Athens and Hera at Argos. The motive of the snake of the palace goddess guardian of the city is shared by Iuno Seispes with Athena as well as its periodic feeding. This religious pattern moreover includes armour, goatskin dress, sacred birds and a concern with virginity in cult. Virginity is connected to regality: the existence and welfare of the community was protected by virgin goddesses or the virgin attendants of a goddess. This theme shows a connexion with the fundamental theological character of Iuno, that of incarnating vital force: virginity is the condition of unspoilt, unspent vital energy that can ensure communion with nature and its rhythm, symbolised in the fire of Vesta
. It is a decisive factor to ensure the safety of the community and the growth of crops. The role of Iuno is at the crossing point of civil and natural life, expressing their interdependence.
At Laurentum
she was known as Kalendaris Iuno and was honoured as such ritually at the kalendae of each month from March to December, i.e. the months of the prenuman ten month year, fact which is a testimony to the antiquity of the custom.
A Greek influence in their cults looks probable.
After the definitive subjugation of the Latin League
in 338 BC the Romans required as a condition of peace the condominium of the Roman people on the sanctuary and the sacred grove of Juno Seispes in Lanuvium, while bestowing Roman citizenry on the Lanuvins. Consequently the prodigia happened in her temple were referred to Rome and accordingly expiated there. Many occurred during the presence of Hannibal in Italy. At the time of Cicero
Milo
, Lanuvium's dictator and highest magistrate, resided in Rome. When he met Clodius
near Bovillae
and his slaves murdered the politician, he was on his way to Lanuvium in order to nominate the flamen of Juno Seispes. Perhaps the Romans were not completely satisfied of this solution as in 194 BC consul C. Cornelius Cethegus erected a temple to the Juno Sospita of Lanuvium in the Forum Holitorium (vowed three years earlier in a war with the Galli Insubri): in it the goddess was honoured in martial effigy.
G. Dumezil has on the other hand proposed the theory of the irreducibility and interdependence of the three aspects (sovereignty, war, fertility) that he interprets as an original, irreducible structure as hypothesised in his theory of the trifunctional ideology of the Indoeuropean. While Dumezil's refusal of seeing a Greek influence in Italic Junos looks difficult to maintain in the light of the contributions of archaeology, his comparative analysis of the divine structure is supported by many scholars, as M. Renard and J. Poucet. His theory purports that while male gods incarnated one single function, there are female goddesses who make up a synthesis of the three functions, as a reflection of the ideal of woman's role in society. Even though such a deity has a peculiar affinity for one function, generally fertility, i. e. the third, she is nevertheless equally competent in each of the three.
As concrete instances Dumezil makes that of Vedic goddess Sarasvatī and Avestic Anāhīta
. Sarasvati as river goddess is first a goddess of the third function, of vitality and fertility associated to the deities of the third function as the Aśvin and of propagation as Sinīvalī
. She is the mother and on her rely all vital forces. But at the same time she belongs to the first function as a religious sovereign: she is pure, she is the means of purifications and helps the conceiving and realisation of pious thoughts. Lastly she is also a warrior: allied with the Maruts
she annihilates the enemies and, sole among female goddesses, bears the epithet of the warrior god Indra
, vṛtraghnỉ, destroyer of oppositions. She is the common spouse of all the heroes of the Mahābhārata
, sons and heirs of the Vedic gods Dharma
, Vāyu
, Indra
and of the Aśvin twins. Though in hymns and rites her threefold nature is never expressed conjointly (except in Ṛg Veda VI 61, 12:: triṣadásthā having three seats).
Only in her Avestic equivalent Anahita, the great mythic river, does she bear the same three valences explicitly: her Yašt states she is invoked by warriors, by clerics and by deliverers. She bestows on females an easy delivery and timely milking. She bestowed on heroes the vigour by which they defeated their demonic adversaries. She is the great purifier, "she who puts the worshipper in the ritual, pure condition" (yaož dā). Her complete name too is threefold: The Wet (Arədvī), The Strong (Sūrā), The Immaculate (Anāhitā).
Dumezil remarks these titles match perfectly those of Latin Junos, especially the Juno Seispes Mater Regina of Lanuvium, the only difference being in the religious orientation of the first function. Compare also the epithet Fluonia, Fluviona of Roman Juno, discussed by G. Radke. However D. P. Harmon has remarked that the meaning of Seispes cannot be seen as limited to the warrior aspect, as it implies a more complex, comprehensive function, i. e. of Saviour.
Among Germanic peoples the homologous goddess was bivalent, as a rule the military function was subsumed into the sovereign: goddess *Frīy(y)o- was at the same time sovereign, wife of the great god, and Venus (thence *Friy(y)a-dagaz "Freitag for Veneris dies). However the internal tension of the character led to a duplication in Scandinavian religion: Frigg
resulted into a merely sovereign goddess, the spouse of wizard god Óðinn, while from the name of Freyr
, typical god of the third function, was extracted a second character, Freyja, confined as a Vani
to the sphere of pleasure and wealth.
Dumezil opines that the theologies of ancient Latium could have preserved a composite image of the goddess and this fact, notably her feature of being Regina, would in turn have rendered possible her interpretatio as Hera.
The divine couple received from Greece its matrimonial implications, thence bestowing on Juno the role of tutelary goddess of marriage (Iuno Pronuba).
However the couple itself cannot be reduced to a Greek apport. The association of Juno and Jupiter is of the most ancient Latin theology. Praeneste offers a glimpse into original Latin mythology: the local goddess Fortuna
is represented as milking two infants, one male and one female, namely Jove
(Jupiter) and Juno. It seems fairly safe to assume that from the earliest time they were identified by names and since they got them they were never changed through the course of history: they were called Jupiter and Juno and these gods were the most ancient deities of every Latin town. Praeneste has preserved divine filiation and infancy as the sovereign god and his paredra Juno have a mother who is the primordial goddess Fortuna Primigenia. Many terracotta statuettes have been discovered which represent a woman with a child: one of them represents exactly the scene described by Cicero of a woman with two children of different sex who touch her breast. Two of the votive inscriptions to Fortuna associate her and Jupiter: " Fortunae Iovi puero..." and "Fortunae Iovis puero..."
However in 1882 M. R. Mowat published an inscription in which Fortuna is called daughter of Jupiter, raising new questions and opening new perspectives in the theology of Latin gods. Dumezil has elaborated an interpretative theory according to which this aporia would be an intrinsic, fundamental feature of Indoeuropean deities of the primordial and sovereign level, as it finds a parallel in Vedic religion. The contradiction would put Fortuna both at the origin of time and into its ensuing diachronic process: it is the comparison offered by Vedic deity Aditi
, the Not-Bound or Enemy of Bondage, that shows that there is no question of choosing one of the two apparent options: as the mother of the Aditya she has the same type of relationship with one of his sons, Dakṣa
, the minor sovereign. who represents the Creative Energy, being at the same time his mother and daughter, as is true for the whole group of sovereign gods to which she belongs. Moreover Aditi is thus one of the heirs (along with Savitr
) of the opening god of the Indoiranians, as she is represented with her head on her two sides, with the two faces looking opposite directions. The mother of the sovereign gods has thence two solidal but distinct modalities of duplicity, i.e. of having two foreheads and a double position in the genealogy. Angelo Brelich has interpreted this theology as the basic opposition between the primordial absence of order (chaos) and the organisation of the cosmos.
(better known as Tigillum Sororium) of October 1.
Janus as gatekeeper of the gates connecting Heaven and Earth and guardian of all passages is particularly related to time and motion. He holds the first place in ritual invocations and prayers, in order to ensure the communication between the worshipper and the gods. He enjoys the privilege of receiving the first sacrifice of the new year, which is offered by the rex on the day of the Agonium of January as well as at the kalenade of each month: These rites show he is considered the patron of the cosmic year. Ovid in his Fasti
has Janus say that he is the original Chaos and also the first era of the world, which got organised only afterwards. He preserves a tutelary function on this universe as the gatekeeper of Heaven. His nature, qualities and role are reflected in the myth of him being the first to reign in Latium, on the banks of the Tiber, and there receiving god Saturn
, in the age when the Earth still could bear the gods. The theology of Janus is also presented in the carmen Saliare
. According to Johannes Lydus the Etruscans called him Heaven. His epithets are numerous Iunonius is particularly relevant, as the god of the kalendae who cooperates with and is the source of the youthful vigour of Juno in the birth of the new lunar month. His other epithet Consivius hints to his role in the generative function.
The role of the two gods at the kalendae of every month is that of presiding over the birth of the new moon. Janus and Juno cooperate as the first looks after the passage from the previous to the ensuing month while the second helps it through the strength of her vitality. The rites of the kalendae included the invocations to Juno Covella, giving the number of days to the nonae, a sacrifice to Janus by the rex sacrorum and the pontifex minor at the curia Calabra and one to Juno by the regina sacrorum in the Regia: originally when the month was still lunar the pontifex minor had the task of signalling the appearance of the new moon. While the meaning of the epithet Covella is unknown and debated, that of the rituals is clear as the divine couple is supposed to oversee, protect and help the moon during the particularly dangerous time of her darkness and her labours: the role of Juno Covella is hence the same as that of Lucina for women during parturition. The association of the two gods is reflected on the human level at the difficult time of labours as is apparent in the custom of putting a key, symbol of Janus, in the hand of the woman with the aim of ensuring an easy delivery, while she had to invoke Juno Lucina. At the nonae Caprotinae similarly Juno had the function of aiding and strengthening the moon as the nocturnal light, at the time when her force was supposed to be at its lowest, after the Summer solstice.
The Tigillum Sororium was a rite (sacrum) of the gens Horatia
and later of the State. In it Janus Curiatius was associated to Juno Sororia: they had their altars on opposite sides of the alley behind the Tigillum Sororium. Physically this consisted of a beam spanning the space over two posts. It was kept in good condition down to the time of Livy at public expenses. According to tradition it was a rite of purification that served at the expiation of Publius Horatius who had murdered his own sister when he saw her mourning the death of her betrothed Curiatius. Dumézil has shown in his Les Horaces et les Curiaces that this story is in fact the historical transcription of rites of reintegration into civil life of the young warriors, in the myth symbolised by the hero, freed from their furor (wrath), indispensable at war but dangerous in social life. What is known of the rites of October 1 shows at Rome the legend has been used as an aetiological myth for the yearly purification ceremonies which allowed the desacralisation of soldiers at the end of the warring season, i.e. their cleansing from the religious pollution contracted at war. The story finds parallels in Irish and Indian mythologies. These rites took place in October, month that at Rome saw the celebration of the end of the yearly military activity. Janus would then the patron of the feria as god of transitions, Juno for her affinities to Janus, especially on the day of the kalendae. It is also possible though that she took part as the tutelary goddess of young people, the iuniores, etymologically identical to her. Modern scholars are divided on the interpretation of J. Curiatius and J. Sororia. Renard citing Capdeville opines that the wisest choice is to adhere to tradition and consider the legend itself as the source of the epithts.
M. Renard advanced the view that Janus and not Juppiter was the original paredra or consort of Juno, on the grounds of their many common features, functions and appearance in myth or rites as is shown by their cross coupled epithets Janus Curiatius and Juno Sororia: Janus shares the epithet of Juno Curitis and Juno the epithet Janus Geminus, as sororius means paired, double. Renard's theory has been rejected by G. Capdeville as not being in accord with the level of sovereign gods in Dumezil's trifunctional structure. The theology of Janus would show features typically belonging to the order of the gods of the beginning. In Capdeville's view it is only natural that a god of beginnings and a sovereign mother deity have common features, as all births can be seen as beginnings, Juno is invoked by deliverers, who by custom hold a key, symbol of Janus.
are undoubetdly Greek his figure underwent an early assimilation into Italic local religions and might even preserve traces of an association to Indoiranian deity Trita Apya that in Greece have not survived. Among other roles that Juno and Hercules share there is the protection of the newborn. Jean Bayet has argued that such a function must be a later development as it looks to have supersided that of the two original Latin gods Picumnus
and Pilumnus
.
The two gods are mentioned together in a dedicatory inscription found in the ruins of the temple of Hercules at Lanuvium, whose cult was ancient and second in importance only to that of Juno Sospita. In the cults of this temple just like in those at the Ara maxima in Rome women were not allowed. The exclusion of one sex is a characteristic practice in the cults of deities of fertility. Even though no text links the cults of the Ara maxima with Juno Sospita, her temple, founded in 193 BC, was located in the Forum Holitorium
near the Porta Carmentalis, one of the sites of the legend of Hercules in Rome. The feria of the goddess coincides with a Natalis Herculis, birthday of Hercules, which was celebrated with ludi circenses, games in the circus. In Bayet's view Juno and Hercules did superside Pilumnus and Picumnus in the role of tutelary deities of the newborn not only because of their own features of goddess of the deliverers and of apotropaic tutelary god of infants but also because of their common quality of gods of fertility. This was the case in Rome and at Tusculum
where a cult of Juno Lucina and Hercules was known. At Lanuvium and perhaps Rome though their most ancient association rests on their common fertility and military characters. The Latin Junos certainly possessed a marked warlike character (at Lanuvium, Falerii, Tibur, Rome). Such character might suggest a comparison with the Greek armed Hera
s one finds in the South of Italy at Cape Lacinion and at the mouth of river Sele, military goddesses close to the Heras of Elis
and Argos
known as Argivae. In the cult this Hera received at Cape Lacinion she was associated with Heracles, supposed the founder of the sanctuary. Contacts with Central Italy and similarity would have favoured a certain assimilation between Latin warlike Junos and Argive Heras and the association with Heracles of Latin Junos. Some scholars, mostly Italians, recognize in the Junos of Falerii, Tibur and Lavinium the Greek Hera, rejecting the theory of an indigenous original cult of a military Juno. Renard thinks Dumezil's opposition to such a view is to be upheld: Bayet's words though did not deny the existence of local warlike Junos, but only imply that at a certain time they received the influence of the Heras of Lacinion and Sele, fact that earned them the epithet of Argive and a Greek connotation. However Bayet recognized the quality of mother and of fertility deity as being primitive among the three purported by the epithets of the Juno of Lanuvium (Seispes, Mater, Regina).
Magna Graecia and Lanuvium mixed their influence in the formation of the Roman Hercules and perhaps there was a Sabine element too as is testified by Varro, supported by the find of the sanctuary of Hercules Curinus at Sulmona and by the existence of a Juno Curitis in Latium.
The mythical theme of the suckling of the adult Heracles
by Hera
, though being of Greek origin, is considered by scholars as having received its full acknowledgement and development in Etruria: Heracles has become a bearded adult on the mirrors of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Most scholars view the fact as an initiation, i.e. the accession of Heracles to the condition of immortal. Even though the two versions coexisted in Greece and that of Heracles infant is attested earlier Renard suggests a process more in line with the evolution of the myth: the suckling of the adult Heracles should be regarded as more ancient and reflecting its original true meaning.
, i.e. that as men possess a tutelary entity or double named genius, so women have their own one named juno, has been maintained by many scholars, lastly Kurt Latte. In the past it has also been argued that goddess Juno herself would be the issue of a process of abstraction from the individual junos of every woman. According to Georg Wissowa
and K. Latte Genius (from the root gen-, whence gigno bear or be born, archaic also geno) would design the specific virile generative potency, as opposed to feminine nature, reflected in conception and delivery, under the tutelage of Juno Lucina. Such an interpretation has been critically reviewed by Walter F. Otto
While there are some correspondences between the ideas about genius and juno, especially in the imperial age, the relevant documentation is rather late (Tibullus
mentions it first). Dumezil also remarks from these passages one could infer every woman has a Venus too. As evidence of the antiquity of the concept of a juno of women, homologous to the genius of men, is the Arval
sacrifice of two sheep to the Juno Deae Diae
("the juno of goddesses named Dea Dia"), in contrast to their sacrifice of two cows sacrificed to Juno (singular). However both G. Wissowa and K. Latte allow that this ritual could have been adapted to fit theology of the Augustan restoration. While the concept of a Juno of goddesses is not attested in the inscriptions of 58 BC from Furfo, that of a Genius of gods is, and even of a Genius of a goddess, Victoria
. On this point it looks remarkable that also in Martianus Capella
's division of Heaven a Juno Hospitae Genius is mentioned in region IX, and not a Juno: the sex of this Genius is feminine. See section below for details.
Romans believed the genius of somebody was an entity that embodied his essential character, personality, and also originally his vital, generative force and raison d' être. However the genius had no direct relationship with sex, at least in classical time conceptions, even though the nuptial bed was named lectus genialis in honour of the Genius and brides on the day of marriage invoked the genius of their grooms. This seems to hint to a significance of the Genius as the propagative spirit of the gens, of whom every human individual is an incarnation: Censorinus
states: "Genius is the god under whose tutelage everyone is born and lives on", and that "many ancient authors, among whom Granius Flaccus
in his De Indigitamentis, maintain that he is one and the same with the Lar
", meaning the Lar Familiaris. Festus calls him "a god endowed with the power of doing everything", then citing an Aufustius: "Genius is the son of the gods and the parent of men, from whom men receive life. Thence is he named my genius, because he begot me". Festus's quotation goes on saying: "Other think he is the special god of every place", a notion that reflect a different idea. In classic age literature and iconography he is often represented as a snake, that may appear in the conjugal bed, this conception being perhaps the issue of a Greek influence. It was easy for the Roman concept of Genius to expand annexing other similar religious figures as the Lares and the Greek δαίμων αγαθός.
The genius was believed to be associated with the forehead of each man, while goddess Juno, not the juno of every woman, was supposed to have under her jurisdiction the eyebrows of women or to be the tutelary goddess of the eyebrows of everybody, irrespective of one's sex.
(Heres Martea).
Every year, on the first of March, women held a festival in honor of Juno Lucina called the Matronalia
. Lucina was an epithet for Juno as "she who brings children into light." On this day, lambs and cattle were sacrificed in her honor in the temple of her sacred grove on the Cispius
.
The second festival was devoted to Juno Moneta on June 1.
Following was the festival of the Nonae Caprotinae ("The Nones of the Wild Fig") held on July 7.
The festival of Juno Regina fell on September 1, followed on the 13 of the same month by that of Juno Regina Capitolina.
October 1 was the date of the Tigillum Sororium in which the goddess was honoured as Juno Sororia.
Last of her yearly festivals came that of Juno Sospita on February 1. It was an appropriate date for her celebration since the month of February was considered a perilous time of passage, as then the cosmic year comes to an end and the limits between the world of the living and the underworld are no longer safely defined. Hence the community invoked the protection (tutela) of the warlike Juno Sospita, The Saviour.
Juno is the patroness of marriage, and many people believe that the most favorable time to marry is June, the month named after the goddess.
Testimony of intense cultural exchanges with the Greeks have been found in 1969 at the sanctuary of the port of Gravisca near Tarquinia
. Renard thinks the cult of Hera in great emporia such as Croton
, Posidonia, Pyrgi might be a counter to Aphrodite's, linked to sacred prostitution in ports, as the sovereign of legitimate of marriage and family and of their sacrality. Hera's presence had already been attested at Caere
in the sanctuary of Manganello. In the 18th century a dedication to Iuno Historia was discovered at Castrum Novum (Santa Marinella). The cult of Iuno and Hera is generally attested in Etruria.
The relationship between Uni and the Phoenician goddess Astarte
has been brought to light by the discovery of the Pyrgi Tablets
in 1964. At Pyrgi
, one of the ports of Caere, excavations had since 1956 revealed the existence of a sacred area, intensely active from the last quarter of the VI century, yielding two documents of a cult of Uni
. Scholars had long believed Etruscan goddess Uni was strongly influenced by the Argive Heras and had her Punic counterpart in Carthaginian goddess Tanit
, identified by the Romans as Juno Caelestis. Nonetheless Augustin had already stated that Iuno was named Astarte in the Punic language, notion that the discovery of the Pyrgi lamellae has proved correct. It is debated whether such an identification was linked to a transient political stage corresponding with Tefarie Velianas's Carthagenian-backed tyranny on Caere as the sanctuary does not show any other trait proper to Phoenician ones. The mention of the goddess of the sanctuary as being named locally Eileitheia and Leucothea by different Greek authors narrating its destruction by the Syracusean fleet in 384 BC, made the picture even more complex. R. Bloch has proposed a two stage interpretation: the first thonym Eilethya corresponds to Juno Lucina, the second Leuchothea to Mater Matuta. However the local theonym is Uni and one would legitimately expect it to be translated as Hera. A fragmentary bronze lamella discovered on the same site and mentioning both theonym Uni and Thesan (i. e. Latin Juno and Aurora-Mater Matuta) would then allow the inference of the integration of the two deities at Pyrgi: the local Uni-Thesan matronal and auroral, would have become the Iuno Lucina and the Mater Matuta of Rome. The Greek assimilation would reflect this process as not direct but subsequent to a process of distinction. Renard rejects this hypothesis since he sees in Uni and Thesan two distinct deities, though associated in cult. However the entire picture should have been familiar in Italian and Roman religious lore as is shown by the complexity and ambivalence of the relationship of Juno with the Rome and Romans in Virgil's Aeneid, who has Latin, Greek and Punic traits, result of a plurisaecular process of amalgamation. Also remarkable in this sense is the Fanum Iunonis of Malta (of the Hellenistic period) which has yielded dedicatory inscriptions to Astarte and Tanit.
in the first three cases that determines an equivalent shift.
An entity named Juno Hospitae Genius is to be found alone in region IX. Since Grotius (1599) many editors have proposed the correction of Hospitae into Sospitae. S. Weinstock has proposed to identify this entity with one of the spouses of Neptune
, as the epithet recurs below (I 81) used in this sense.
In region XIV is located Juno Caelestis along with Saturn
. This deity is the Punic Astarte_Tanit, usually associated with Saturn in Africa. Iuno Caelestis is thence in turn assimilated to Ops
and Greek Rhea
. Uni is here the Punic goddess, in accord with the identification of Pyrgi. Her paredra was the Phoenician god Ba'al, interpreted as Saturn. Capdeville admits of being unable to explain the collocation of Juno Caelestis among the underworld gods, which looks to be determined mainly by her condition of spouse of Saturn.
city of Maastricht
, which was founded as Trajectum ad Mosam about 2000 years ago, the remains of the foundations of a substantial temple for Juno and Jupiter are to be found in the cellars of Hotel Derlon. Over part of the Roman remains the first Christian church of the Netherlands was built in the 4th century AD.
The story behind these remains begins with Juno and Jupiter being born as twins of Saturn
and Opis
. Juno was sent to Samos Island
when she was a very young child. She was carefully raised there until puberty
, when she then married her brother. A statue was made representing Juno, the bride, as a young girl on her wedding day. It was carved out of Parian marble
and placed in front of her temple at Samos for many centuries. Ultimately this statue of Juno was brought to Rome and placed in the sanctuary of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill
. For a long time the Romans honored her with many ceremonies under the name Queen Juno. The remains were moved then sometime between the first century and the fourth century to the Netherlands.
is as the primary antagonistic force in Virgil
's Aeneid
, where she is depicted as a cruel and savage goddess intent upon supporting first Dido and then Turnus
and the Rutuli
ans against Aeneas
' attempt to found a new Troy
in Italy. There has been some speculation—such as by Maurus Servius Honoratus, an ancient commentator on the Aeneid—that she is perhaps a conflation of Hera
with the Carthaginian
storm-goddess Tanit
in some aspects of her portrayal here.
Juno is also mentioned in The Tempest
in Act IV, Scene I. In this, she relates to Prospero as they are both leaders in their realm and have spirit like messengers who are very loyal (Juno has Iris, Prospero has Ariel). William Shakespeare
repeatedly mentions Juno throughout the play Antony and Cleopatra
, often in forms of exclamation by the characters.
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...
, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn
Saturn (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...
and sister (but also the wife) of the chief god Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
and the mother of Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
and Vulcan
Vulcan (mythology)
Vulcan , aka Mulciber, is the god of beneficial and hindering fire, including the fire of volcanoes in ancient Roman religion and Roman Neopaganism. Vulcan is usually depicted with a thunderbolt. He is known as Sethlans in Etruscan mythology...
. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
. As the patron goddess of Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
she was called Regina ("queen") and, together with Jupiter and Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
, was worshipped as a triad on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome.
Juno's own warlike aspect among the Romans is apparent in her attire. She often appeared sitting pictured with a peacock armed and wearing a goatskin cloak. The traditional depiction of this warlike aspect was assimilated from the Greek goddess Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
, whose goatskin was called the 'aegis'.
Etymology
The name Iuno was once thought to be connected to Iove (Jove), originally as Diuno and Diove from *Diovona. At the beginning of the 20th century, a derivation was proposed from iuven- (as in Latin iuvenis, "youth"), through a syncopated form iūn- (as in iūnix, "heifer," and iūnior, "younger"). This etymology became widely accepted after it was endorsed by Georg WissowaGeorg Wissowa
Georg Otto August Wissowa was a German classical philologist who was born in Neudorf, near Breslau.Wissowa studied at the University of Breslau, and in 1886 became a professor at the University of Marburg, and in 1895 a professor at the University of Halle.Wissowa was a specialist in the study of...
.
Iuuen- is related to Latin aevum and Greek aion
Aeon
The word aeon, also spelled eon or æon , originally means "life", and/or "being", though it then tended to mean "age", "forever" or "for eternity". It is a Latin transliteration from the koine Greek word , from the archaic . In Homer it typically refers to life or lifespan...
(αιών) through a common Indo-European root
Proto-Indo-European root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
referring to a concept of vital energy or "fertile time." The iuvenis is he who has the fullness of vital force. In some inscriptions Jupiter himself is called Iuuntus, and one of the epithets of Jupiter is Ioviste, a superlative form
Superlative
In grammar, the superlative is the form of an adjective that indicates that the person or thing modified has the quality of the adjective to a degree greater than that of anything it is being compared to in a given context. English superlatives are typically formed with the suffix -est In...
of iuuen- meaning "the youngest." Iuventas, "Youth," was one of two deities who "refused" to leave the Capitol when the building of the new Temple of Capitoline Jove required the exauguration of deities who already occupied the site. These data show the intrinsic relationship between Jupiter and Juno and a common founding idea in their theology.
Ancient etymologies associated Juno's name with iuvare, "to aid, benefit", and iuvenescendo, "rejuvenate," sometimes connecting it to the renewal of the new and waxing moon, perhaps implying the idea of a moon goddess.
Roles and epithets
Juno's theology is one of the most complex and disputed issues in Roman religion. Even more than other major Roman deities, Juno held a large number of significant and diverse epithetEpithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
s, names and titles representing various aspects and roles of the goddess. In accordance with her central role as a goddess of marriage, these included Pronuba and Cinxia ("she who looses the bride's girdle"). However, other epithets of Juno have wider implications and are less thematically linked.
While her connection with the idea of vital force, fulness of vital energy, eternal youthfulness is now generally acknowledged, the multiplicity and complexity of her personality have given rise to various and sometimes irreconcilable interpretations among modern scholars.
Juno is certainly the divine protectress of the community, who shows both a sovereign and a fertility character, often associated with a military one. She was present in many towns of ancient Italy: at Lanuvium
Lanuvium
Lanuvium is an ancient city of Latium , some 32 km southeast of Rome, a little southwest of the Via Appia....
as Sespeis Mater Regina, Laurentum
Laurentum
Laurentum was an ancient Roman city of Latium situated between Ostia and Lavinium, on the west coast of the Italian Peninsula southwest of Rome. Roman writers regarded it as the original capital of the Latins, before Lavinium assumed that role after the death of King Latinus...
, Tibur, Falerii
Falerii
Falerii was one of the twelve chief cities of Etruria, situated about 1.5 km west of the ancient Via Flaminia, around 50 kilometers north of Rome.- History :According to legend, it was of Argive origin...
, Veii
Veii
Veii was, in ancient times, an important Etrurian city NNW of Rome, Italy; its site lies in Isola Farnese, a village of Municipio XX, an administrative subdivision of the comune of Rome in the Province of Rome...
as Regina, at Tibur and Falerii as Regina and Curitis, Tusculum
Tusculum
Tusculum is a ruined Roman city in the Alban Hills, in the Latium region of Italy.-Location:Tusculum is one of the largest Roman cities in Alban Hills. The ruins of Tusculum are located on Tuscolo hill—more specifically on the northern edge of the outer crater ring of the Alban volcano...
and Norba
Norba
Norba, an ancient town of Latium , Italy. It is situated 1 mile northwest of the modern town of Norma, some 1575 ft. above sea-level, on the west edge of the Volscian Mountains or Monti Lepini...
as Lucina. She is also attested at Praeneste, Aricia, Ardea, Gabii
Gabii
Gabii was an ancient city of Latium, located due east of Rome along the Via Praenestina, which was in early times known as the Via Gabina....
. In five Latin towns a month was named after Juno (Aricia, Lanuvium, Laurentum, Praeneste, Tibur). Outside Latium in Campania
Campania
Campania is a region in southern Italy. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy; its total area of 13,590 km² makes it the most densely populated region in the country...
at Teanum she was Populona (she who increase the number of the people or, in K. Latte's understanding of the iuvenes, the army), in Umbria
Umbria
Umbria is a region of modern central Italy. It is one of the smallest Italian regions and the only peninsular region that is landlocked.Its capital is Perugia.Assisi and Norcia are historical towns associated with St. Francis of Assisi, and St...
at Pisaurum Lucina, at Terventum in Samnium
Samnium
Samnium is a Latin exonym for a region of south or south and central Italy in Roman times. The name survives in Italian today, but today's territory comprising it is only a small portion of what it once was. The populations of Samnium were called Samnites by the Romans...
Regina, in at Pisarum Regina Matrona, at Aesernia in Samnium Regina Populona. In Rome she was since the most ancient times named Lucina, Mater and Regina. It is debated whether she was also known as Curitis before the evocatio of the Juno of Falerii: this though seems probable.
Other epithets of hers that were in use at Rome include Moneta and Caprotina, Tutula, Fluonia or Fluviona, Februalis, the last ones associated with the rites of purification and fertility of February.
Her various epithets thus show a complex of mutually interrelated functions that in the view of G. Dumezil and V. Basanoff can be traced back to the Indoeuropean trifunctional ideology: as Regina and Moneta she is a sovereign deity, as Sespeis, Curitis (spear holder) and Moneta (again) she is an armed protectress, as Mater and Curitis (again) she is a goddess of the fertility and wealth of the community in her association with the curiae.
The epithet Lucina is particularly revealing since it reflects two interrelated aspects of the function of Juno: cyclical renewal of time in the waning and waxing of the moon and protection of delivery and birth (as she who brings to light the newborn as vigour, vital force). The ancient called her Covella in her function of helper in the labours of the new moon. The view that she was also a Moon goddess though is no longer accepted by scholars, as such a role belongs to Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
Lucifera: through her association with the moon she governed the feminine physiological functions, menstrual cycle and pregnancy: as a rule all lunar deities are deities of childbirth. These aspects of Juno mark the heavenly and worldly sides of her function. She is thus associated to all beginnings and hers are the kalendae of every month: at Laurentum she was known as Kalendaris Iuno (Juno of the Kalends
Kalends
The Calends , correspond to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar. The Romans assigned these calends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle...
). At Rome on the Kalends of every month the pontifex
Pontifex
PONTIFEX was a mid-1980s project that introduced a novel approach to complex aircraft fleet scheduling, partially funded by the European Commission’s Strategic Programme for R&D in Information Technology.Since the mathematical problems stemming from non trivial fleet scheduling easily become...
minor invoked her, under the epithet Covella, when from the curia Calabra announced the date of the nonae. On the same day the regina sacrorum sacrificed to Juno a white sow or lamb in the Regia
Regia
The Regia was a structure in Ancient Rome, located in the Roman Forum. It was originally the residence of the kings of Rome or at least their main headquarters, and later the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Roman religion. It occupied a triangular patch of terrain between the...
. She is closely associated with Janus
Janus
-General:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings*Janus , a moon of Saturn*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter...
, the god of passages and beginnings who after her is often named Iunonius.
Some scholars view this concentration of multiple functions as a typical and structural feature of the goddess, inherent to her being an expression of the nature of femininity. Other though prefer to dismiss her aspects of femininity and fertility and stress only her quality of being the spirit of youthfulness, liveliness and strength, regardless of sexual connexions, which would then change according to circumstances: thus in men she incarnates the iuvenes, word often used to design soldiers, hence resulting in a tutelary deity of the sovereignty of peoples; in women capable of bearing children, from puberty on she oversees childbirth and marriage. Thence she would be a poliad goddess related to politics, power and war. Other think her military and poliadic qualities arise from her being a fertility goddess who through her function of increasing the numbers of the community became also associated to political and military functions.
Roman Juno Sospita and Lucina
Part of the following sections is based on the article by Geneviève Dury Moyaers and Marcel Renard "Aperçu critique des travaux relatifs au culte de Junon" in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römische Welt 1981 p. 142-202.The rites of the month of February and the Nonae Caprotinae of July 5 offer a depiction of the interrelated roles of the deity in the spheres of fertility, war, and regality.
February is a month of passages, of ends and beginnings, and as such the month of yearly universal purification and renewal. Ovid discusses the etymology of February at the beginning of book II of the Fasti, connecting it to februae, i.e. piamina, expiations. As the most important time of passage of the year it implies risks for the community that have to be averted: the risk of contamination brought about by the contact with the underworld. Juno is then present and active at the three most prominent and relevant times of the month: on the kalendae (the first), with the celebration of the dies natalis birthday, of Juno Sospita on the Palatine
Palatine
A palatine or palatinus is a high-level official attached to imperial or royal courts in Europe since Roman times...
, on 15th as Juno Lucina, inspirator and patroness of the Lupercalia
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
and as Lucina and at its end, on March 1, as the protectress of the Matronae and of the preservation of marriages: this day united into one three festivals as it was the kalendae of the month, the beginning of the new year and the birthday of Romulus (as well as the date of the commemoration of the appeasing role of women during the war between Romans and Sabines).
Juno as Sospita (the Saviour) is thus the goddess that defends and protects the Romans since the first day in this perilous time of passage. On the same day recurred the celebration at the lucus grove of Helernus, which Dumezil thinks was a god of vegetation
Vegetation deity
A vegetation deity is a nature deity whose disappearance and reappearance, or life, death and rebirth, embodies the growth cycle of plants. In nature worship, the deity can be a god or goddess with the ability to regenerate itself. A vegetation deity is often a fertility deity...
related to the cult of Carna
Cardea
Cardea or Carda was the ancient Roman goddess of the hinge , Roman doors being hung on pivot hinges. The Augustan poet Ovid conflates her with another archaic goddess named Carna, whose festival was celebrated on the Kalends of June and for whom he gives the alternative name Cranê or Cranea, a nymph...
/Crane, a nymph who may be an image of Juno Sospita. The way this period should be dealt with came to a concrete acme on the 15 in the Lupercalia
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
: the rite was directly suggested to the Roman couples by Juno Lucina in her lucus on the Esquiline, and was considered to be a rite of periodical purification and fertility. It was perhaps also associated to the renewal of political power, as it may appear in the competition between the two groups of the Luperci
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
, the Fabii and the Quinctii, mythically associated to Remus and Romulus. This political valence is illustrated by the episode of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
who chose this occasion to enact the scene of his crowning by Mark Antony
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...
and by the fact that he created a third group, the Luperci Iulii. This element would perhaps be the reason of the eulogy of Augustus at the beginning of book II of Ovid's Fasti: as the heir of Caesar he had indeed succeeded in his stepfather's plan. Here is then the sovereign function of Juno that is highlighted.
After Wissowa many scholars have remarked the similarity between the Juno of the Lupercalia and the Juno of Lanuvium Seispes Mater Regina as both are associated with the goat, symbol of fertility. But in essence there is unity between fertility, regality and purification. This unity is underlined by the role of Faunus
Faunus
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Faunus was the horned god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He came to be equated in literature with the Greek god Pan....
in the aetiologic story told by Ovid and the symbolic relevance of the Lupercal
Lupercal
The Lupercal is a cave at the foot of the Palatine Hill in Rome, between the Temple of Apollo Palatinus and the Basilica of Santa Anastasia. In the legend of Rome's foundation, Romulus and Remus were found there by the lactating female wolf who suckled them until they were found by Faustulus...
: asked by the Roman couples at her lucus how to overcome the sterility that ensued the abduction of the Sabine women, Juno answered through a murmuring of leaves "Italidas matres sacer hircus inito" "That a sacred ram cover the Italic mothers".
February owes its name to the februae, lustrations, and the goat whose hide is used to make the whips of the Luperci
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
is named februum and amiculus Iunonis. The Juno of this day bears the epithet of Februalis, Februata, Februa. Februlis oversees the secundament of the placenta and is strictly associated to Fluvonia, Fluonia, goddess who retains the blood inside the body during pregnancy. While the protection of pregnancy is stressed by Duval, Palmer sees in Fluonia only the Juno of lustration in river water. Ovid devotes an excursus to the lustrative function of river water in the same place in which he explains the etymology of February.
A temple (aedes) of Juno Lucina was built in 375 BC in the grove sacred to the goddess from early times. It stood precisely on the Cispius
Cispius
Cispius is the nomen of the Roman gens Cispia.-Cispius Laevus:The Mons Cispius, or Cispian Hill, is one of several summits of the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The grammarian Festus says that it was named for a Cispius Laevus of Anagnia, of the Publilia voting tribe . This Cispius may be legendary.-M...
near the sixth shrine of the Argei
Argei
Argei may refer to:* Argei , ritual figures in ancient Roman religion, and also their shrines* Argei - olive oil manufacturer...
. probably not far west of the church of S. Prassede, where inscriptions relating to her cult have been found. The grove should have extended down the slope south of the temple. As Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of ancient Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC...
ordered the gifts for the newborn to be placed in the treasury of the temple though it looks that another shrine stood there before 375 BC. In 190 BC the temple was struck by lightning, its gable and doors injured. The annual festival of the Matronalia
Matronalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Matronalia was a festival celebrating Juno Lucina, the goddess of childbirth , and of motherhood and women in general. In the original Roman calendar traditionally thought to have been established by Romulus, it was the first day of the year...
was celebrated here on March 1, day of the dedication of the temple.
A temple to Iuno Sospita was vowed by consul C. Cornelius Cethegus in 197 BC and dedicated in 194. By 90 BC the temple had fallen into disrepute: in that year it was stained by episodes of prostitution and a bitch delivered her puppies right beneath the statue of the goddess. By decree of the senate consul L. Iulius Caesar ordered its restoration. In his poem Fasti Ovid states the temple of Juno Sospita had become dilapidated to the extent of being no longer discernible "because of the injuries of time": this looks hardly possible as the restoration had happened no longer than a century earlier and relics of the temple exixst to-day. It is thence plausible that an older temple of Juno Sospita existed in Rome within the pomerium
Pomerium
The pomerium or pomoerium , was the sacred boundary of the city of Rome. In legal terms, Rome existed only within the pomerium; everything beyond it was simply territory belonging to Rome.-Location and extensions:Tradition maintained that it was the original line ploughed by Romulus around the...
, as Ovid says it was located near the temple of the Phrygian Mother (Cybele
Cybele
Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...
), which stood on the western corner of the Palatine
Palatine
A palatine or palatinus is a high-level official attached to imperial or royal courts in Europe since Roman times...
. As a rule temples of foreign, imported gods stood without the pomerium.
Juno Caprotina
The alliance of the three aspects of Juno finds a strictly related parallel to the Lupercalia in the festival of the Nonae Caprotinae. On that day the Roman free and slave women picniced and had fun together near the site of the wildfig (caprificus): the custom implied runs, mock battles with fists and stones, obscene language and finally the sacrifice of a male goat to Juno Caprotina under a wildfig tree and with the using of its lymph.This festival had a legendary aetiology in a particularly delicate episode of Roman history and also recurs at (or shortly after) a particular time of the year, that of the so called caprificatio when branches of wild fig trees were fastened to cultivated ones to promote insemination. The historical episode narrated by ancient sources concerns the siege of Rome by the Latin peoples that ensued the Gallic sack. The dictator of the Latins Livius Postumius from Fidenae
Fidenae
Fidenae, or Fidenes, home of the Fidenates, was an ancient town of Latium, situated about 8 km north of Rome on the Via Salaria, which ran between it and the Tiber. As the Tiber was the border between Etruria and Latium, the left-bank settlement of Fidenae represented an extension of Etruscan...
would have requested the Roman senate that the matronae and daughters of the most prominent families be surrendered to the Latins as hostages. While the senate was debating the issue a slave girl, whose Greek name was Philotis and Latin Tutela or Tutula proposed that she together with other slave girls would render herself up to the enemy camp pretending to be the wives and daughters of the Roman families. Upon agreement of the senate, the women dressed up elegantly and wearing golden jewellery reached the Latin camp. There they seduced the Latins into fooling and drinking: after they had fallen asleep they stole their swords. Then Tutela gave the convened signal to the Romans brandishing an ignited branch after climbing on the wild fig (caprificus) and hiding the fire with her mantle. The Romans then irrupted into the Latin camp killing the enemies in their sleep. The women were rewarded with freedom and a dowry at public expenses.
Dumezil in his Archaic Roman Religion had been unable to interpret the myth underlying this legendary event, later though he accepted the interpretation given by P. Drossart and published it in his Fêtes romaines d'été et d'automne, suivi par dix questions romaines in 1975 as Question IX. In folklore the wild fig tree is universally associated with sex because of its fertilising power, the shape of its fruits and the white viscous juice of the tree.
Basanoff has argued that the legend not only alludes to sex and fertility in its association with wildfig and goat but is in fact a summary of sort of all the qualities of Juno. As Juno Sespeis of Lanuvium Juno Caprotina is a warrior, a fertiliser and a sovereign protectress. In fact the legend presents a heroine, Tutela, who is a slightly disguised representation of the goddess: the request of the Latin dictator would mask an attempted evocatio of the tutelary goddess of Rome. Tutela indeed shows regal, military and protective traits, apart from the sexual ones. Moreover according to Basanoff these too (breasts, milky juice, genitalia, present or symbolised in the fig and the goat) in general, and here in particular, have an inherently apotropaic value directly related to the nature of Juno. The occasion of the feria, shortly after the poplifugia
Poplifugia
The poplifugia or populifugia , was a festival of ancient Rome celebrated on July 5, according to Varro, in commemoration of the flight of the Romans, when the inhabitants of Ficuleae and Fidenae appeared in arms against them, shortly after the burning of the city by the Gauls ; the traditional...
, i.e. when the community is in its direst straits, needs the intervention of a divine tutelary goddess, a divine queen, since the king (divine or human) has failed to appear or has fled. Hence the customary battles under the wild figs, the scurrile language that bring together the second and third function. This festival would thus show a ritual that can prove the trifunctional nature of Juno.
Other scholars limit their interpretation of Caprotina to the sexual implications of the goat, the caprificus and the obscene words and plays of the festival.
Juno Curitis
Under this epithet Juno is attested in many places, notably at FaleriiFalerii
Falerii was one of the twelve chief cities of Etruria, situated about 1.5 km west of the ancient Via Flaminia, around 50 kilometers north of Rome.- History :According to legend, it was of Argive origin...
and Tibur. Dumezil remarked that Juno Curitis "is represented and invoked at Rome under conditions very close to those we know about for Juno Seispes of Lanuvium
Lanuvium
Lanuvium is an ancient city of Latium , some 32 km southeast of Rome, a little southwest of the Via Appia....
". Martianus Capella states she must be invoked by those who are involved in war. The hunt of the goat by stonethrowing at Falerii is described in Ovid Amores III 13, 16 ff. In fact the Juno Curritis of Falerii shows a complex articulated structure closely allied to the threefold Juno Seispes of Lanuvium.
Ancient etymologies associated the epithet with Cures
Cures
Cures, a Sabine town between the left bank of the Tiber and the Via Salaria, about 26 km. from Rome. According to legend, it was from Cures that Titus Tatius led to the Quirinal the Sabine settlers, from whom, after their union with the settlers on the Palatine, the whole Roman people took the...
, with the Sabine word for spear curis, with currus cart, with Quirites, with the curiae, as king Titus Tatius dedicated a table to Juno in every curia, that Dionysius still saw.
Modern scholars have proposed the town of Currium or Curria, Quirinus
Quirinus
In Roman mythology, Quirinus was an early god of the Roman state. In Augustan Rome, Quirinus was also an epithet of Janus, as Janus Quirinus. His name is derived from Quiris meaning "spear."-History:...
, *quir(i)s or *quiru, the Sabine word for spear and curia
Curia
A curia in early Roman times was a subdivision of the people, i.e. more or less a tribe, and with a metonymy it came to mean also the meeting place where the tribe discussed its affairs...
. The *quiru- would design the sacred spear that gave the name to the primitive curiae. The discovery at Sulmona
Sulmona
thumb|150px|Celestine V's hermitage and the remains of the Shrine of Hercules Curinus.thumb|150px|Palazzo SS. Annunziata and Museo Civicothumb|150px|Church of SS...
of a sanctuary of Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
Curinus lends support to a Sabine origin of the epithet and of the cult of Juno in the curiae. The spear could also be the celibataris hasta (bridal spear) that in the marriage ceremonies was used to comb the bridegroom's hair as a good omen. Palmer views the rituals of the curiae devoted to her as a reminiscence of the origin of the curiae themselves in rites of evocatio, practise the Romans continued to use for Juno or her equivalent at later times as for Falerii, Veii
Veii
Veii was, in ancient times, an important Etrurian city NNW of Rome, Italy; its site lies in Isola Farnese, a village of Municipio XX, an administrative subdivision of the comune of Rome in the Province of Rome...
and Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
. Juno Curitis would then be the evoked deity after her admission into the curiae.
Juno Curitis had a temple on the Campus Martius
Campus Martius
The Campus Martius , was a publicly owned area of ancient Rome about in extent. In the Middle Ages, it was the most populous area of Rome...
. Excavations in Largo di Torre Argentina have revealed four temple structures, one of whom (temple D or A) could be the temple of Juno Curitis. She shared her anniversary day with Juppiter Fulgur, who had an altar nearby.
Juno Moneta
This Juno is placed by ancient sources in a warring context. Dumezil thinks the third, military, aspect of Juno is reflected in Juno Curitis and Moneta. Palmer too sees in her a military aspectAs for the etymology Cicero gives the verb monēre warn, hence the Warner. Palmer accepts Cicero's etymology as a possibility while adding mons mount, hill, verb e-mineo and noun monile referred to the Capitol, place of her cult. Also perhaps a cultic term or even, as in her temple were kept the Libri Lintei
Linen Rolls
The Linen Rolls, Libri Lintei in Latin, were a collection of books written on linen, a technique attributed to the Etruscans.These were records which, according to one recent theory, originated from notes jotted by officials on their linen clothing, allegedly contained antique lists of annual state...
, monere would thence have the meaning of recording: Livius Andronicus
Livius Andronicus
Lucius Livius Andronicus , not to be confused with the later historian Livy, was a Greco-Roman dramatist and epic poet of the Old Latin period. He began as an educator in the service of a noble family at Rome by translating Greek works into Latin, including Homer’s Odyssey. They were meant at...
identifies her as Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne , source of the word mnemonic, was the personification of memory in Greek mythology. This titaness was the daughter of Gaia and Uranus and the mother of the nine Muses by Zeus:* Calliope * Clio * Erato...
.
Her dies natalis was on the kalendae of June. Her Temple on the summit of the Capitol was dedicted only in 348 BC by dictator L. Furius Camillus, presumably a son of the great Furius. Livy states he vowed the temple during a war against the Aurunci
Aurunci
The Aurunci were an Italic population which lived in southern Italy from around the 1st millennium BC. Of Indo-European origin, their language belonged to the Oscan group...
. Modern scholars agree that the origins of the cult and of the temple were much more ancient. M. Guarducci considers her cult very ancient, identifying her with Mnemosyne as the Warner because of her presence near the auguraculum, her oracular character, her announcement of perils: she considers her as an introduction into Rome of the Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
of Cuma dating to the VIII century. L. A. Mac Kay considers the goddess more ancient than her etymology on the testimony of Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
who states she was the Juno of Veii. The sacred geese of the Capitol were lodged in her temple: as they are recorded in the episode of the Gallic siege (ca. 396-390 BC) by Livy, the temple should have existed before Furius's dedication. Basanoff considers her to go back to the regal period: she would be the Sabine Juno who arrived at Rome through Cures
Cures
Cures, a Sabine town between the left bank of the Tiber and the Via Salaria, about 26 km. from Rome. According to legend, it was from Cures that Titus Tatius led to the Quirinal the Sabine settlers, from whom, after their union with the settlers on the Palatine, the whole Roman people took the...
. At Cures she was the tutelary deity of the military chief: as such she is never to be found among Latins. This new quality is apparent in the location of her fanum, her name, her role: 1. her altar is located in the regia of Titus Tatius; 2. Moneta is, from monere, the Adviser: like Egeria
Egeria (mythology)
Egeria was a nymph attributed a legendary role in the early history of Rome as a divine consort and counselor of the Sabine second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, to whom she imparted laws and rituals pertaining to ancient Roman religion...
with Numa (Tatius's son in law) she is associated to a Sabine king; 3. In Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
the altar-tables of the curiae are consecrated to Juno Curitis to justify the false etymology of Curitis from curiae: the tables would assure the presence of the tutelary numen of the king as an adviser within each curia, as the epithet itself implies. It can be assumed thence that Juno Moneta intervenes under warlike circumstances as associated to the sacral power of the king.
Juno Regina
Juno Regina is perhaps the epithet most fraught with questions. While some scholars maintain she was known as such at Rome since the most ancient times as paredra of Jupiter in the Capitoline TriadCapitoline Triad
In ancient Roman religion, the Capitoline Triad was a group of three supreme deities who were worshipped in an elaborate temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium. Two distinct Capitoline Triads were worshipped at various times in Rome's history, both originating in ancient traditions...
others think she is a new acquisition introduced to Rome after her evocatio from Veii.
Palmer thinks she is to be identified with Juno Populona of later inscriptions, a political and military poliadic deity who had in fact a place in the Capitoline temple and was intended to represent the Regina of the king. The date of her introduction, though ancient, would be uncertain; she should perhaps be identified with Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
Basilea or as the queen of Jupiter Rex. The actual epithet Regina could though come from Veii. At Rome this epithet may have been applied to a Juno other than that of the temple on the Aventine built to lodge the evocated Veian Juno as the rex sacrorum
Rex Sacrorum
In ancient Roman religion, the rex sacrorum was a senatorial priesthood reserved for patricians. Although in the historical era the pontifex maximus was the head of Roman state religion, Festus says that in the ranking of priests, the rex sacrorum was of highest prestige, followed by the flamines...
and his wife-queen were to offer a monthly sacrifice to Juno in the Regia. This might imply that the prerepublican Juno was royal.
Marcus Furius Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman soldier and statesman of patrician descent. According to Livy and Plutarch, Camillus triumphed four times, was five times dictator, and was honoured with the title of Second Founder of Rome....
, while she is attested in many Etruscan and Latin towns. Before that time her Roman equivalent was Juno Moneta. Marcel Renard for his part considers her an ancient Roman figure since the title of the Veian Juno expresses a cultic reality that is close to and indeed presupposes the existence at Rome of an analogous character: as a rule it is the presence of an original local figure that may allow the introduction of the new one through evocatio. He agrees with Dumezil that we ignore whether the translation of the epithet is exhaustive and what Etruscan notion corresponded to the name Regina which itself is certainly an Italic title. This is the only instance of evocatio recorded by the annalistic tradition. However Renard considers Macrobius's authority reliable in his long list of evocationes on the grounds of an archaeological find at Isaura. Roe D'Albret underlines the role played by Camillus and sees a personal link between the deity and her magistrate. Similarly Dumezil has remarked the link of Camillus with Mater Matuta
Mater Matuta
Mater Matuta was an indigenous Roman goddess, whom the Romans eventually made equivalent to the dawn goddess Aurora, and the Greek goddess Eos. Mater Matuta had a temple on the Forum Boarium, and she was also associated with the sea harbors and ports, where there were other temples to her.Her...
. In his relationship to the goddess he takes the place of the king of Veii. Camillus's devotion to female deities Mater Matuta and Fortuna and his contemporary vow of a new temple to both Matuta and Iuno Regina hint to a degree of identity between them: this assumption has by chance been supported by the discovery at Pyrgi
Pyrgi
Pyrgi was an ancient Etruscan port in Latium, central Italy, to the north-west of Caere. Its location is now occupied by the burgh of Santa Severa....
of a bronze lamella which mentions together Uni
Uni (mythology)
Uni was the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon and the patron goddess of Perugia. Uni was identified by the Etruscans as their equivalent of Juno in Roman mythology and Hera in Greek mythology....
and Thesan
Thesan
In Etruscan mythology, Thesan was the goddess of the dawn and was associated with the generation of life. She was identified with the Roman Aurora and Greek Eos....
, the Etruscan Juno and Aurora, i.e. Mater Matuta. One can then suppose Camillus's simultaneous vow of the temples of the two goddesses should be seen in the light of their intrinsic association. Octavianus will repeat the same translation with the statue of the Juno of Perusia
Perusia
The ancient Perusia, now Perugia, first appears in history as one of the 12 confederate cities of Etruria. It is first mentioned in the account of the war of 310 or 309 BC between the Etruscans and the Romans...
in consequence of a dream
The fact that a goddess evoked in war and for political reasons receive the homage of women and that women continue to have a role in her cult is explained by Palmer as a foreign cult of feminine sexuality of Etruscan derivation. The persistence of a female presence in her cult through the centuries down to the lectisternium
Lectisternium
In ancient Roman religion, the lectisternium was a propitiatory ceremony, consisting of a meal offered to gods and goddesses. The word derives from lectum sternere, "to spread a couch." The deities were represented by their busts or statues, or by portable figures of wood, with heads of bronze,...
of 217 BC, when the matronae collected money for the service, and to the times of Augustus during the ludi saeculares in the sacrifices to Capitoline Juno are proof of the resilience of this foreign tradition.
Gagé and D'Albret remark an accentuation of the matronal aspect of Juno Regina that led her to be the most matronal of the Roman goddesses by the time of the end of the republic. This fact raises the question of understanding why she was able of attracting the devotion of the matronae. Gagé traces back the phenomenon to the nature of the cult rendered to the Juno Regina of the Aventine in which Camillus played a role in person. The original devotion of the matronae was directed to Fortuna
Fortuna
Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...
. Camillus was devout to her and to Matuta, both matronal deities. When he brought Juno Regina from Veii the Roman women were already acquainted with many Junos, while the ancient rites of Fortuna were falling off. Camillus would have then have made a political use of the cult of Juno Regina to subdue the social conflicts of his times by attribuing to her the role of primordial mother.
Juno Regina had two temples (aedes) in Rome. The one dedicated by Furius Camillus in 392 BC stood on the Aventine: it lodged the wooden statue of the Juno transvected from Veii. It is mentioned several times by Livy in connexion with sacrifices offered in atonement of prodigia. It was restored by Augustus. Two inscriptions found near the church of S. Sabina indicate the approximate site of the temple, which corresponds with its place in the lustral procession of 207 BC, near the upper end of the Clivus Publicius. The day of the dedication and of her festival was September 1.
Another temple stood near the circus Flaminius
Circus Flaminius
The Circus Flaminius was a large, circular area of land in Rome that contained a small race-track reserved for mysterious games, and various other buildings and monuments. It was located in the southern end of the Campus Martius, near the Tiber River. It was ‘built,’ or sectioned off, by Flaminius...
, vowed by consul Marcus Aemilius Lepdius in 187 BC during the war against the Ligures
Ligures
The Ligures were an ancient people who gave their name to Liguria, a region of north-western Italy.-Classical sources:...
and dedicated by himself as censor in 179 on December 23. It was connected by a porch with a temple of Fortuna perhaps that of Fortuna
Fortuna
Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...
Equestris. Its probable site according to Platner is just south of the porticus Pompeiana on the west end of circus Flaminius.
The Juno Cealestis of Carthage Tanit
Tanit
Tanit was a Phoenician lunar goddess, worshipped as the patron goddess at Carthage. Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the fifth century BCE onwards Tanit is associated with that of Baal Hammon...
was evoked according to Macrobius. She did not receive a temple in Rome: presumably her image was deposited in another temple of Juno (Moneta or Regina) and later transferred to the Colonia Junonia
Colonia Junonia
Colonia Junonia refers to an Ancient Roman colony established in 122BC under the direction of Gaius Gracchus. The colony was located at the site of the destroyed city of Carthage, a reason for its widespread unpopularity with Romans. Those superstitious about the site spread reports of ill...
founded by Caius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populari politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the ill-fated reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus...
. The goddess was once again transferred to Rome by emperor Elagabalus
Elagabalus
Elagabalus , also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman Emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan Dynasty, he was Syrian on his mother's side, the son of Julia Soaemias and Sextus Varius Marcellus. Early in his youth he served as a priest of the god El-Gabal at his hometown, Emesa...
.
Juno in the Capitoline triad
The first mention of a Capitoline triad refers to the Capitolium Vetus. The only ancient source who refers to the presence of this divine triad in Greece is Pausanias X 5, 1-2, who mentions its existence in describing the Φωκικόν in PhocisPhocis
Phocis is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Central Greece. It stretches from the western mountainsides of Parnassus on the east to the mountain range of Vardousia on the west, upon the Gulf of Corinth...
. The Capitoline triad poses difficult interpretative problems. It looks peculiarly Roman, since there is no sure document of its existence elsewhere either in Latium or Etruria. A direct Greek influence is possible but it would be also plausible to consider it a local creation. Dumézil advanced the hypothesis it could be an ideological construction of the Tarquins to oppose new Latin nationalism, as it included the three gods that in the Iliad are enemies of Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
. It is probable Latins had already accepted the legend of Aeneas as their ancestor. Among ancient sources indeed Servius states that according to the Etrusca Disciplina towns should have the three temples of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva at the end of three roads leading to three gates. Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
writes that the temples of these three gods should be located on the most elevated site, isolated from the other. To his Etruscan founders the meaning of this triad might have been related to peculiarly Etruscan ideas on the association of the three gods with the birth of Herakles and the siege of Troy, in which Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
plays a decisive role as a goddess of destiny along with the sovereign couple Uni Tinia.
The Junos of Latium
The cults of the Italic Junos reflected remarkable theological complexes: regality, military protection and fertility.In Latium are relatively well known the instances of Tibur, Falerii, Laurentum and Lanuvium.
At Tibur and Falerii their sacerdos was a male, called pontifex sacrarius, fact that has been seen as a proof of the relevance of the goddess to the whole society. In both towns she was known as Curitis, the spearholder, an armed protectress. The martial aspect of these Junos is conspicuous, quite as that of fecundity and regality: the last two look strictly interconnected: fertility guaranteed the survival of the community, peaceful and armed. Iuno Curitis is also the tutelary goddess of the curiae and of the new brides, whose hair was combed with the spear called caelibataris hasta as in Rome. In her annaual rites at Falerii youths and maiden clad in white bore in procession gifts to the goddess whose image was escorted by her priestesses. The idea of purity and virginity is stressed in Ovid's description. A she goat is sacrificed to her after a ritual hunting. She is then the patroness of the young soldiers and of brides.
At Lanuvium the goddes is known under the epithet Seispes Mater Regina. The titles themselves are a theological definition: she was a sovereign goddess, a martial goddess and a fertility goddess. Hence her flamen
Flamen
In ancient Roman religion, a flamen was a priest assigned to one of fifteen deities with official cults during the Roman Republic. The most important three were the flamines maiores , who served the three chief Roman gods of the Archaic Triad. The remaining twelve were the flamines minores...
was chosen by the highest local magistrate, the dictator, and since 388 BC the Roman consuls were required to offer sacrifices to her. Her sanctuary was famous, rich and powerful.
Her cult included the annual feeding of a sacred snake with barley cakes by virgin maidens. The snake dwelt in a deep cavern within the precinct of the temple on the arx of the city: the maidens approached the lair blindfolded. The snake was supposed to feed only on the cakes offered by chaste girls. The rite was aimed at ensuring agricultural fertility. The site of the temple as well as the presence of the snake show she was the tutelary goddess of the city, as Athena at Athens and Hera at Argos. The motive of the snake of the palace goddess guardian of the city is shared by Iuno Seispes with Athena as well as its periodic feeding. This religious pattern moreover includes armour, goatskin dress, sacred birds and a concern with virginity in cult. Virginity is connected to regality: the existence and welfare of the community was protected by virgin goddesses or the virgin attendants of a goddess. This theme shows a connexion with the fundamental theological character of Iuno, that of incarnating vital force: virginity is the condition of unspoilt, unspent vital energy that can ensure communion with nature and its rhythm, symbolised in the fire of Vesta
Vesta (mythology)
Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. Vesta's presence was symbolized by the sacred fire that burned at her hearth and temples...
. It is a decisive factor to ensure the safety of the community and the growth of crops. The role of Iuno is at the crossing point of civil and natural life, expressing their interdependence.
At Laurentum
Laurentum
Laurentum was an ancient Roman city of Latium situated between Ostia and Lavinium, on the west coast of the Italian Peninsula southwest of Rome. Roman writers regarded it as the original capital of the Latins, before Lavinium assumed that role after the death of King Latinus...
she was known as Kalendaris Iuno and was honoured as such ritually at the kalendae of each month from March to December, i.e. the months of the prenuman ten month year, fact which is a testimony to the antiquity of the custom.
A Greek influence in their cults looks probable.
After the definitive subjugation of the Latin League
Latin league
The Latin League was a confederation of about 30 villages and tribes in the region of Latium near ancient Rome, organized for mutual defense...
in 338 BC the Romans required as a condition of peace the condominium of the Roman people on the sanctuary and the sacred grove of Juno Seispes in Lanuvium, while bestowing Roman citizenry on the Lanuvins. Consequently the prodigia happened in her temple were referred to Rome and accordingly expiated there. Many occurred during the presence of Hannibal in Italy. At the time of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
Milo
Titus Annius Milo
Titus Annius Milo Papianus was a Roman political agitator, the son of Gaius Papius Celsus, but adopted by his maternal grandfather, Titus Annius Luscus...
, Lanuvium's dictator and highest magistrate, resided in Rome. When he met Clodius
Clodius
Clodius is an alternate form of the Roman nomen Claudius, a patrician gens that was traditionally regarded as Sabine in origin. The alternation of o and au is characteristic of the Sabine dialect...
near Bovillae
Bovillae
Bovillae was an ancient town in Lazio, central Italy, currently part of the Frattocchie frazione in the municipality of Marino.It was a station on the Via Appia , located c. 18 km SE of Rome. It was a colony of Alba Longa, and appears as one of the thirty cities of the Latin league...
and his slaves murdered the politician, he was on his way to Lanuvium in order to nominate the flamen of Juno Seispes. Perhaps the Romans were not completely satisfied of this solution as in 194 BC consul C. Cornelius Cethegus erected a temple to the Juno Sospita of Lanuvium in the Forum Holitorium (vowed three years earlier in a war with the Galli Insubri): in it the goddess was honoured in martial effigy.
Theological and comparative remarks
The complexity of the figure of Juno has caused much uncertainty and debate among modern scholars. Some emphasize one aspect or character of the goddess, considering it as primary: the other ones would then be the natural and even necessary development of the first. Palmer and Harmon consider it to be the natural vital force of youthfulness, Latte women's fecundity. These original characters would have led to the formation of the complex theology of Juno as a sovereign and an armed tutelary deity.As concrete instances Dumezil makes that of Vedic goddess Sarasvatī and Avestic Anāhīta
Anahita
Anahita is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as ' ; the Avestan language name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of 'the Waters' and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom...
. Sarasvati as river goddess is first a goddess of the third function, of vitality and fertility associated to the deities of the third function as the Aśvin and of propagation as Sinīvalī
Sinivali
Sinivali is a Vedic goddess, mentioned in two hymns of the Rigveda, in RV 2.32 and RV 10.184. In 2.32.7-8 she is described as broadhipped, fair-armed, fair-fingered, presiding over fecundity and easy birth. She is invoked together with Gungu, Raka, Sarasvati, Indrani and Varunani...
. She is the mother and on her rely all vital forces. But at the same time she belongs to the first function as a religious sovereign: she is pure, she is the means of purifications and helps the conceiving and realisation of pious thoughts. Lastly she is also a warrior: allied with the Maruts
Maruts
In Hinduism the Marutas , also known as the Marutagana and sometimes identified with Rudras, are storm deities and sons of Rudra and Diti and attendants of Indra. The number of Maruts varies from two to sixty . They are very violent and aggressive, described as armed with golden weapons i.e...
she annihilates the enemies and, sole among female goddesses, bears the epithet of the warrior god Indra
Indra
' or is the King of the demi-gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology. He is also the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall.Indra is one of the chief deities in the Rigveda...
, vṛtraghnỉ, destroyer of oppositions. She is the common spouse of all the heroes of the Mahābhārata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, sons and heirs of the Vedic gods Dharma
Dharma
Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...
, Vāyu
Vayu
Vāyu is a primary Hindu deity, the Lord of the winds, the father of Bhima and the spiritual father of Lord Hanuman...
, Indra
Indra
' or is the King of the demi-gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology. He is also the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall.Indra is one of the chief deities in the Rigveda...
and of the Aśvin twins. Though in hymns and rites her threefold nature is never expressed conjointly (except in Ṛg Veda VI 61, 12:: triṣadásthā having three seats).
Only in her Avestic equivalent Anahita, the great mythic river, does she bear the same three valences explicitly: her Yašt states she is invoked by warriors, by clerics and by deliverers. She bestows on females an easy delivery and timely milking. She bestowed on heroes the vigour by which they defeated their demonic adversaries. She is the great purifier, "she who puts the worshipper in the ritual, pure condition" (yaož dā). Her complete name too is threefold: The Wet (Arədvī), The Strong (Sūrā), The Immaculate (Anāhitā).
Dumezil remarks these titles match perfectly those of Latin Junos, especially the Juno Seispes Mater Regina of Lanuvium, the only difference being in the religious orientation of the first function. Compare also the epithet Fluonia, Fluviona of Roman Juno, discussed by G. Radke. However D. P. Harmon has remarked that the meaning of Seispes cannot be seen as limited to the warrior aspect, as it implies a more complex, comprehensive function, i. e. of Saviour.
Among Germanic peoples the homologous goddess was bivalent, as a rule the military function was subsumed into the sovereign: goddess *Frīy(y)o- was at the same time sovereign, wife of the great god, and Venus (thence *Friy(y)a-dagaz "Freitag for Veneris dies). However the internal tension of the character led to a duplication in Scandinavian religion: Frigg
Frigg
Frigg is a major goddess in Norse paganism, a subset of Germanic paganism. She is said to be the wife of Odin, and is the "foremost among the goddesses" and the queen of Asgard. Frigg appears primarily in Norse mythological stories as a wife and a mother. She is also described as having the power...
resulted into a merely sovereign goddess, the spouse of wizard god Óðinn, while from the name of Freyr
Freyr
Freyr is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was highly associated with farming, weather and, as a phallic fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals"...
, typical god of the third function, was extracted a second character, Freyja, confined as a Vani
Vani
Vani is a town in Imereti region of western Georgia, at the Sulori river , 41 km southwest from the regional capital Kutaisi...
to the sphere of pleasure and wealth.
Dumezil opines that the theologies of ancient Latium could have preserved a composite image of the goddess and this fact, notably her feature of being Regina, would in turn have rendered possible her interpretatio as Hera.
Juno and Jupiter
However the couple itself cannot be reduced to a Greek apport. The association of Juno and Jupiter is of the most ancient Latin theology. Praeneste offers a glimpse into original Latin mythology: the local goddess Fortuna
Fortuna
Fortuna can mean:*Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck -Geographical:*19 Fortuna, asteroid*Fortuna, California, town located on the north coast of California*Fortuna, United States Virgin Islands...
is represented as milking two infants, one male and one female, namely Jove
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
(Jupiter) and Juno. It seems fairly safe to assume that from the earliest time they were identified by names and since they got them they were never changed through the course of history: they were called Jupiter and Juno and these gods were the most ancient deities of every Latin town. Praeneste has preserved divine filiation and infancy as the sovereign god and his paredra Juno have a mother who is the primordial goddess Fortuna Primigenia. Many terracotta statuettes have been discovered which represent a woman with a child: one of them represents exactly the scene described by Cicero of a woman with two children of different sex who touch her breast. Two of the votive inscriptions to Fortuna associate her and Jupiter: " Fortunae Iovi puero..." and "Fortunae Iovis puero..."
However in 1882 M. R. Mowat published an inscription in which Fortuna is called daughter of Jupiter, raising new questions and opening new perspectives in the theology of Latin gods. Dumezil has elaborated an interpretative theory according to which this aporia would be an intrinsic, fundamental feature of Indoeuropean deities of the primordial and sovereign level, as it finds a parallel in Vedic religion. The contradiction would put Fortuna both at the origin of time and into its ensuing diachronic process: it is the comparison offered by Vedic deity Aditi
Aditi
Aditi in Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. In the Vedas Aditi is mother of the gods from whose cosmic matrix the heavenly bodies were born...
, the Not-Bound or Enemy of Bondage, that shows that there is no question of choosing one of the two apparent options: as the mother of the Aditya she has the same type of relationship with one of his sons, Dakṣa
Daksa
Daksa can be :* Daksha in Hinduism,* Daksa, small island near Dubrovnik, Croatia....
, the minor sovereign. who represents the Creative Energy, being at the same time his mother and daughter, as is true for the whole group of sovereign gods to which she belongs. Moreover Aditi is thus one of the heirs (along with Savitr
Savitr
Savitr IAST: savitrIn Vedic religion, Savitr , Savitā is a solar deity and one of the Adityas i.e. off-spring of Vedic deity Aditi. His name in Vedic Sanskrit connotes "impeller, rouser, vivifier"...
) of the opening god of the Indoiranians, as she is represented with her head on her two sides, with the two faces looking opposite directions. The mother of the sovereign gods has thence two solidal but distinct modalities of duplicity, i.e. of having two foreheads and a double position in the genealogy. Angelo Brelich has interpreted this theology as the basic opposition between the primordial absence of order (chaos) and the organisation of the cosmos.
Juno and Janus
The relationship of the female sovereign deity with the god of beginnings and passages is reflected mainly in their association with the kalendae of every month, which belong to both, and in the festival of the Sororium TigillumSororium Tigillum
The Sororium Tigillum, which translates as the "sister's beam", was a wooden beam said to have been erected in Ancient Rome by the father of Publius Horatius, one of the three triplets Horatii...
(better known as Tigillum Sororium) of October 1.
Janus as gatekeeper of the gates connecting Heaven and Earth and guardian of all passages is particularly related to time and motion. He holds the first place in ritual invocations and prayers, in order to ensure the communication between the worshipper and the gods. He enjoys the privilege of receiving the first sacrifice of the new year, which is offered by the rex on the day of the Agonium of January as well as at the kalenade of each month: These rites show he is considered the patron of the cosmic year. Ovid in his Fasti
Fasti
In ancient Rome, the fasti were chronological or calendar-based lists, or other diachronic records or plans of official and religiously sanctioned events...
has Janus say that he is the original Chaos and also the first era of the world, which got organised only afterwards. He preserves a tutelary function on this universe as the gatekeeper of Heaven. His nature, qualities and role are reflected in the myth of him being the first to reign in Latium, on the banks of the Tiber, and there receiving god Saturn
Saturn (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...
, in the age when the Earth still could bear the gods. The theology of Janus is also presented in the carmen Saliare
Carmen Saliare
The Carmen Saliare is a fragment of archaic Latin, which played a part in the rituals performed by the Salii of Ancient Rome.The rituals revolved around Mars and Quirinus, and were performed in March and October...
. According to Johannes Lydus the Etruscans called him Heaven. His epithets are numerous Iunonius is particularly relevant, as the god of the kalendae who cooperates with and is the source of the youthful vigour of Juno in the birth of the new lunar month. His other epithet Consivius hints to his role in the generative function.
The role of the two gods at the kalendae of every month is that of presiding over the birth of the new moon. Janus and Juno cooperate as the first looks after the passage from the previous to the ensuing month while the second helps it through the strength of her vitality. The rites of the kalendae included the invocations to Juno Covella, giving the number of days to the nonae, a sacrifice to Janus by the rex sacrorum and the pontifex minor at the curia Calabra and one to Juno by the regina sacrorum in the Regia: originally when the month was still lunar the pontifex minor had the task of signalling the appearance of the new moon. While the meaning of the epithet Covella is unknown and debated, that of the rituals is clear as the divine couple is supposed to oversee, protect and help the moon during the particularly dangerous time of her darkness and her labours: the role of Juno Covella is hence the same as that of Lucina for women during parturition. The association of the two gods is reflected on the human level at the difficult time of labours as is apparent in the custom of putting a key, symbol of Janus, in the hand of the woman with the aim of ensuring an easy delivery, while she had to invoke Juno Lucina. At the nonae Caprotinae similarly Juno had the function of aiding and strengthening the moon as the nocturnal light, at the time when her force was supposed to be at its lowest, after the Summer solstice.
The Tigillum Sororium was a rite (sacrum) of the gens Horatia
Horatia (gens)
The gens Horatia was an ancient patrician family at Rome. In legend, the gens dates back to the time of Tullus Hostilius, the third King of Rome. One of its members, Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, was consul suffectus in 509 BC, the first year of the Republic, and again in 507...
and later of the State. In it Janus Curiatius was associated to Juno Sororia: they had their altars on opposite sides of the alley behind the Tigillum Sororium. Physically this consisted of a beam spanning the space over two posts. It was kept in good condition down to the time of Livy at public expenses. According to tradition it was a rite of purification that served at the expiation of Publius Horatius who had murdered his own sister when he saw her mourning the death of her betrothed Curiatius. Dumézil has shown in his Les Horaces et les Curiaces that this story is in fact the historical transcription of rites of reintegration into civil life of the young warriors, in the myth symbolised by the hero, freed from their furor (wrath), indispensable at war but dangerous in social life. What is known of the rites of October 1 shows at Rome the legend has been used as an aetiological myth for the yearly purification ceremonies which allowed the desacralisation of soldiers at the end of the warring season, i.e. their cleansing from the religious pollution contracted at war. The story finds parallels in Irish and Indian mythologies. These rites took place in October, month that at Rome saw the celebration of the end of the yearly military activity. Janus would then the patron of the feria as god of transitions, Juno for her affinities to Janus, especially on the day of the kalendae. It is also possible though that she took part as the tutelary goddess of young people, the iuniores, etymologically identical to her. Modern scholars are divided on the interpretation of J. Curiatius and J. Sororia. Renard citing Capdeville opines that the wisest choice is to adhere to tradition and consider the legend itself as the source of the epithts.
M. Renard advanced the view that Janus and not Juppiter was the original paredra or consort of Juno, on the grounds of their many common features, functions and appearance in myth or rites as is shown by their cross coupled epithets Janus Curiatius and Juno Sororia: Janus shares the epithet of Juno Curitis and Juno the epithet Janus Geminus, as sororius means paired, double. Renard's theory has been rejected by G. Capdeville as not being in accord with the level of sovereign gods in Dumezil's trifunctional structure. The theology of Janus would show features typically belonging to the order of the gods of the beginning. In Capdeville's view it is only natural that a god of beginnings and a sovereign mother deity have common features, as all births can be seen as beginnings, Juno is invoked by deliverers, who by custom hold a key, symbol of Janus.
Juno and Hercules
Even though the origins of HerculesHercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
are undoubetdly Greek his figure underwent an early assimilation into Italic local religions and might even preserve traces of an association to Indoiranian deity Trita Apya that in Greece have not survived. Among other roles that Juno and Hercules share there is the protection of the newborn. Jean Bayet has argued that such a function must be a later development as it looks to have supersided that of the two original Latin gods Picumnus
Picumnus
In Roman mythology, Picumnus was a god of fertility, agriculture, matrimony, infants and children. He may have been the same god as Sterquilinus. His brother was Pilumnus....
and Pilumnus
Pilumnus
In Roman mythology, Pilumnus was a nature deity, brother of Picumnus. He ensured children grew properly and stayed healthy. Ancient Romans made an extra bed after the birth of a child in order to ensure the help of Pilumnus. He also taught humanity how to grind grain...
.
The two gods are mentioned together in a dedicatory inscription found in the ruins of the temple of Hercules at Lanuvium, whose cult was ancient and second in importance only to that of Juno Sospita. In the cults of this temple just like in those at the Ara maxima in Rome women were not allowed. The exclusion of one sex is a characteristic practice in the cults of deities of fertility. Even though no text links the cults of the Ara maxima with Juno Sospita, her temple, founded in 193 BC, was located in the Forum Holitorium
Forum Holitorium
The Forum Holitorium was the market for vegetables, herbs and oil forum venalium of early ancient Rome, by the Tiber at the foot of the Capitoline and Palatine hills...
near the Porta Carmentalis, one of the sites of the legend of Hercules in Rome. The feria of the goddess coincides with a Natalis Herculis, birthday of Hercules, which was celebrated with ludi circenses, games in the circus. In Bayet's view Juno and Hercules did superside Pilumnus and Picumnus in the role of tutelary deities of the newborn not only because of their own features of goddess of the deliverers and of apotropaic tutelary god of infants but also because of their common quality of gods of fertility. This was the case in Rome and at Tusculum
Tusculum
Tusculum is a ruined Roman city in the Alban Hills, in the Latium region of Italy.-Location:Tusculum is one of the largest Roman cities in Alban Hills. The ruins of Tusculum are located on Tuscolo hill—more specifically on the northern edge of the outer crater ring of the Alban volcano...
where a cult of Juno Lucina and Hercules was known. At Lanuvium and perhaps Rome though their most ancient association rests on their common fertility and military characters. The Latin Junos certainly possessed a marked warlike character (at Lanuvium, Falerii, Tibur, Rome). Such character might suggest a comparison with the Greek armed Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
s one finds in the South of Italy at Cape Lacinion and at the mouth of river Sele, military goddesses close to the Heras of Elis
Elis
Elis, or Eleia is an ancient district that corresponds with the modern Elis peripheral unit...
and Argos
Argos
Argos is a city and a former municipality in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Argos-Mykines, of which it is a municipal unit. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour...
known as Argivae. In the cult this Hera received at Cape Lacinion she was associated with Heracles, supposed the founder of the sanctuary. Contacts with Central Italy and similarity would have favoured a certain assimilation between Latin warlike Junos and Argive Heras and the association with Heracles of Latin Junos. Some scholars, mostly Italians, recognize in the Junos of Falerii, Tibur and Lavinium the Greek Hera, rejecting the theory of an indigenous original cult of a military Juno. Renard thinks Dumezil's opposition to such a view is to be upheld: Bayet's words though did not deny the existence of local warlike Junos, but only imply that at a certain time they received the influence of the Heras of Lacinion and Sele, fact that earned them the epithet of Argive and a Greek connotation. However Bayet recognized the quality of mother and of fertility deity as being primitive among the three purported by the epithets of the Juno of Lanuvium (Seispes, Mater, Regina).
Magna Graecia and Lanuvium mixed their influence in the formation of the Roman Hercules and perhaps there was a Sabine element too as is testified by Varro, supported by the find of the sanctuary of Hercules Curinus at Sulmona and by the existence of a Juno Curitis in Latium.
The mythical theme of the suckling of the adult Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
by Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
, though being of Greek origin, is considered by scholars as having received its full acknowledgement and development in Etruria: Heracles has become a bearded adult on the mirrors of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Most scholars view the fact as an initiation, i.e. the accession of Heracles to the condition of immortal. Even though the two versions coexisted in Greece and that of Heracles infant is attested earlier Renard suggests a process more in line with the evolution of the myth: the suckling of the adult Heracles should be regarded as more ancient and reflecting its original true meaning.
Juno and Genius
The view that Juno was the feminine counterpart to GeniusGenius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
, i.e. that as men possess a tutelary entity or double named genius, so women have their own one named juno, has been maintained by many scholars, lastly Kurt Latte. In the past it has also been argued that goddess Juno herself would be the issue of a process of abstraction from the individual junos of every woman. According to Georg Wissowa
Georg Wissowa
Georg Otto August Wissowa was a German classical philologist who was born in Neudorf, near Breslau.Wissowa studied at the University of Breslau, and in 1886 became a professor at the University of Marburg, and in 1895 a professor at the University of Halle.Wissowa was a specialist in the study of...
and K. Latte Genius (from the root gen-, whence gigno bear or be born, archaic also geno) would design the specific virile generative potency, as opposed to feminine nature, reflected in conception and delivery, under the tutelage of Juno Lucina. Such an interpretation has been critically reviewed by Walter F. Otto
While there are some correspondences between the ideas about genius and juno, especially in the imperial age, the relevant documentation is rather late (Tibullus
Tibullus
Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...
mentions it first). Dumezil also remarks from these passages one could infer every woman has a Venus too. As evidence of the antiquity of the concept of a juno of women, homologous to the genius of men, is the Arval
Arval Brethren
In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests...
sacrifice of two sheep to the Juno Deae Diae
Dea Dia
In Roman mythology, Dea Dia is the goddess of growth. She was sometimes identified with Ceres, and sometimes with the equivalent Greek goddess Demeter....
("the juno of goddesses named Dea Dia"), in contrast to their sacrifice of two cows sacrificed to Juno (singular). However both G. Wissowa and K. Latte allow that this ritual could have been adapted to fit theology of the Augustan restoration. While the concept of a Juno of goddesses is not attested in the inscriptions of 58 BC from Furfo, that of a Genius of gods is, and even of a Genius of a goddess, Victoria
Victoria (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, Victoria was the personified goddess of victory. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike, and was associated with Bellona. She was adapted from the Sabine agricultural goddess Vacuna and had a temple on the Palatine Hill...
. On this point it looks remarkable that also in Martianus Capella
Martianus Capella
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a pagan writer of Late Antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education...
's division of Heaven a Juno Hospitae Genius is mentioned in region IX, and not a Juno: the sex of this Genius is feminine. See section below for details.
Romans believed the genius of somebody was an entity that embodied his essential character, personality, and also originally his vital, generative force and raison d' être. However the genius had no direct relationship with sex, at least in classical time conceptions, even though the nuptial bed was named lectus genialis in honour of the Genius and brides on the day of marriage invoked the genius of their grooms. This seems to hint to a significance of the Genius as the propagative spirit of the gens, of whom every human individual is an incarnation: Censorinus
Censorinus
Censorinus, Roman grammarian and miscellaneous writer, flourished during the 3rd century AD.He was the author of a lost work De Accentibus and of an extant treatise De Die Natali, written in 238, and dedicated to his patron Quintus Caerellius as a birthday gift...
states: "Genius is the god under whose tutelage everyone is born and lives on", and that "many ancient authors, among whom Granius Flaccus
Granius Flaccus
Granius Flaccus was an antiquarian and scholar of Roman law and religion, probably in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus.-Religious scholar:...
in his De Indigitamentis, maintain that he is one and the same with the Lar
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
", meaning the Lar Familiaris. Festus calls him "a god endowed with the power of doing everything", then citing an Aufustius: "Genius is the son of the gods and the parent of men, from whom men receive life. Thence is he named my genius, because he begot me". Festus's quotation goes on saying: "Other think he is the special god of every place", a notion that reflect a different idea. In classic age literature and iconography he is often represented as a snake, that may appear in the conjugal bed, this conception being perhaps the issue of a Greek influence. It was easy for the Roman concept of Genius to expand annexing other similar religious figures as the Lares and the Greek δαίμων αγαθός.
The genius was believed to be associated with the forehead of each man, while goddess Juno, not the juno of every woman, was supposed to have under her jurisdiction the eyebrows of women or to be the tutelary goddess of the eyebrows of everybody, irrespective of one's sex.
Heries Junonis
Among the female entities that in the pontifical ritual invocations accompanied the naming of gods, Juno was associated to Heries, which she shared with MarsMars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
(Heres Martea).
Festivals
All festivals of Juno were held on the kalendae of a month except two (or perhaps three): The Nonae Caprotinae on the nonae of July, the festival of Juno Capitolina on September 13, because the date od these two was determined by preeminence of Jupiter. Perhaps a second festival of Juno Moneta was held on October 10, possibly the date of the dedication of her temple. This fact reflects the strict association of the goddess with the beginning of each lunar month.Every year, on the first of March, women held a festival in honor of Juno Lucina called the Matronalia
Matronalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Matronalia was a festival celebrating Juno Lucina, the goddess of childbirth , and of motherhood and women in general. In the original Roman calendar traditionally thought to have been established by Romulus, it was the first day of the year...
. Lucina was an epithet for Juno as "she who brings children into light." On this day, lambs and cattle were sacrificed in her honor in the temple of her sacred grove on the Cispius
Cispius
Cispius is the nomen of the Roman gens Cispia.-Cispius Laevus:The Mons Cispius, or Cispian Hill, is one of several summits of the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The grammarian Festus says that it was named for a Cispius Laevus of Anagnia, of the Publilia voting tribe . This Cispius may be legendary.-M...
.
The second festival was devoted to Juno Moneta on June 1.
Following was the festival of the Nonae Caprotinae ("The Nones of the Wild Fig") held on July 7.
The festival of Juno Regina fell on September 1, followed on the 13 of the same month by that of Juno Regina Capitolina.
October 1 was the date of the Tigillum Sororium in which the goddess was honoured as Juno Sororia.
Last of her yearly festivals came that of Juno Sospita on February 1. It was an appropriate date for her celebration since the month of February was considered a perilous time of passage, as then the cosmic year comes to an end and the limits between the world of the living and the underworld are no longer safely defined. Hence the community invoked the protection (tutela) of the warlike Juno Sospita, The Saviour.
Juno is the patroness of marriage, and many people believe that the most favorable time to marry is June, the month named after the goddess.
Etrurian Uni, Hera, Astarte and Iuno
The Etruscans were a people of seafaring merchants who entertained strict (if often conflicting) contacts with the other likewise peoples of the Mediterranean, the Greeks, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians.Testimony of intense cultural exchanges with the Greeks have been found in 1969 at the sanctuary of the port of Gravisca near Tarquinia
Tarquinia
Tarquinia, formerly Corneto and in Antiquity Tarquinii, is an ancient city in the province of Viterbo, Lazio, Italy.- History :Tarquinii is said to have been already a flourishing city when Demaratus of Corinth brought in Greek workmen...
. Renard thinks the cult of Hera in great emporia such as Croton
Crotone
Crotone is a city and comune in Calabria, southern Italy, on the Ionian Sea. Founded circa 710 BC as the Achaean colony of Croton , it was known as Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to the current one. In 1994 it became the capital of the newly established...
, Posidonia, Pyrgi might be a counter to Aphrodite's, linked to sacred prostitution in ports, as the sovereign of legitimate of marriage and family and of their sacrality. Hera's presence had already been attested at Caere
Caere
Caere is the Latin name given by the Romans to one of the larger cities of Southern Etruria, the modern Cerveteri, approximately 50-60 kilometres north-northwest of Rome. To the Etruscans it was known as Cisra and to the Greeks as Agylla...
in the sanctuary of Manganello. In the 18th century a dedication to Iuno Historia was discovered at Castrum Novum (Santa Marinella). The cult of Iuno and Hera is generally attested in Etruria.
The relationship between Uni and the Phoenician goddess Astarte
Astarte
Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...
has been brought to light by the discovery of the Pyrgi Tablets
Pyrgi Tablets
The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy , are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan...
in 1964. At Pyrgi
Pyrgi
Pyrgi was an ancient Etruscan port in Latium, central Italy, to the north-west of Caere. Its location is now occupied by the burgh of Santa Severa....
, one of the ports of Caere, excavations had since 1956 revealed the existence of a sacred area, intensely active from the last quarter of the VI century, yielding two documents of a cult of Uni
Uni (mythology)
Uni was the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon and the patron goddess of Perugia. Uni was identified by the Etruscans as their equivalent of Juno in Roman mythology and Hera in Greek mythology....
. Scholars had long believed Etruscan goddess Uni was strongly influenced by the Argive Heras and had her Punic counterpart in Carthaginian goddess Tanit
Tanit
Tanit was a Phoenician lunar goddess, worshipped as the patron goddess at Carthage. Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the fifth century BCE onwards Tanit is associated with that of Baal Hammon...
, identified by the Romans as Juno Caelestis. Nonetheless Augustin had already stated that Iuno was named Astarte in the Punic language, notion that the discovery of the Pyrgi lamellae has proved correct. It is debated whether such an identification was linked to a transient political stage corresponding with Tefarie Velianas's Carthagenian-backed tyranny on Caere as the sanctuary does not show any other trait proper to Phoenician ones. The mention of the goddess of the sanctuary as being named locally Eileitheia and Leucothea by different Greek authors narrating its destruction by the Syracusean fleet in 384 BC, made the picture even more complex. R. Bloch has proposed a two stage interpretation: the first thonym Eilethya corresponds to Juno Lucina, the second Leuchothea to Mater Matuta. However the local theonym is Uni and one would legitimately expect it to be translated as Hera. A fragmentary bronze lamella discovered on the same site and mentioning both theonym Uni and Thesan (i. e. Latin Juno and Aurora-Mater Matuta) would then allow the inference of the integration of the two deities at Pyrgi: the local Uni-Thesan matronal and auroral, would have become the Iuno Lucina and the Mater Matuta of Rome. The Greek assimilation would reflect this process as not direct but subsequent to a process of distinction. Renard rejects this hypothesis since he sees in Uni and Thesan two distinct deities, though associated in cult. However the entire picture should have been familiar in Italian and Roman religious lore as is shown by the complexity and ambivalence of the relationship of Juno with the Rome and Romans in Virgil's Aeneid, who has Latin, Greek and Punic traits, result of a plurisaecular process of amalgamation. Also remarkable in this sense is the Fanum Iunonis of Malta (of the Hellenistic period) which has yielded dedicatory inscriptions to Astarte and Tanit.
Juno in Martianus Capella's division of Heaven
Martianus Capella's collocation of gods into sixteen different regions of Heaven is supposed to be based on and to reflect Etruscan religious lore, at least in part. It is thence comparable with the theonyms found in the sixteen cases of the outer rim of the Piacenza Liver. Juno is to be found in region II, along with Quirinus Mars, Lars militaris, Fons, Lymphae and the dii Novensiles. This position is reflected on the Piacenza Liver by the situation of Uni in case IV, owing to a threefold location of TiniaTinia
Tinia was the god of the sky and the highest god in Etruscan mythology, equivalent to the Roman Jupiter and the Greek Zeus. He was the husband of Thalna or Uni and the father of Heracle....
in the first three cases that determines an equivalent shift.
An entity named Juno Hospitae Genius is to be found alone in region IX. Since Grotius (1599) many editors have proposed the correction of Hospitae into Sospitae. S. Weinstock has proposed to identify this entity with one of the spouses of Neptune
Neptune (mythology)
Neptune was the god of water and the sea in Roman mythology and religion. He is analogous with, but not identical to, the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto, each of them presiding over one of the three realms of the universe,...
, as the epithet recurs below (I 81) used in this sense.
In region XIV is located Juno Caelestis along with Saturn
Saturn (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...
. This deity is the Punic Astarte_Tanit, usually associated with Saturn in Africa. Iuno Caelestis is thence in turn assimilated to Ops
Ops
In ancient Roman religion, Ops or Opis, was a fertility deity and earth-goddess of Sabine origin.-Mythology:Her husband was Saturn, the bountiful monarch of the Golden Age. Just as Saturn was identified with the Greek deity Cronus, Opis was identified with Rhea, Cronus' wife...
and Greek Rhea
Rhea (mythology)
Rhea was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in Greek mythology. She was known as "the mother of gods". In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great Goddess, and was later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the Olympian...
. Uni is here the Punic goddess, in accord with the identification of Pyrgi. Her paredra was the Phoenician god Ba'al, interpreted as Saturn. Capdeville admits of being unable to explain the collocation of Juno Caelestis among the underworld gods, which looks to be determined mainly by her condition of spouse of Saturn.
Statue at Samos
In the DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
city of Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
, which was founded as Trajectum ad Mosam about 2000 years ago, the remains of the foundations of a substantial temple for Juno and Jupiter are to be found in the cellars of Hotel Derlon. Over part of the Roman remains the first Christian church of the Netherlands was built in the 4th century AD.
The story behind these remains begins with Juno and Jupiter being born as twins of Saturn
Saturn (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a major god presiding over agriculture and the harvest time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace by many Roman authors. In medieval times he was known as the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength. He held a sickle in...
and Opis
Ops
In ancient Roman religion, Ops or Opis, was a fertility deity and earth-goddess of Sabine origin.-Mythology:Her husband was Saturn, the bountiful monarch of the Golden Age. Just as Saturn was identified with the Greek deity Cronus, Opis was identified with Rhea, Cronus' wife...
. Juno was sent to Samos Island
Samos Island
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...
when she was a very young child. She was carefully raised there until puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
, when she then married her brother. A statue was made representing Juno, the bride, as a young girl on her wedding day. It was carved out of Parian marble
Parian marble
Parian marble is a fine-grained semitranslucent pure-white and entirely flawless marble quarried during the classical era on the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea.It was highly prized by ancient Greeks for making sculptures...
and placed in front of her temple at Samos for many centuries. Ultimately this statue of Juno was brought to Rome and placed in the sanctuary of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill
Capitoline Hill
The Capitoline Hill , between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the seven hills of Rome. It was the citadel of the earliest Romans. By the 16th century, Capitolinus had become Capitolino in Italian, with the alternative Campidoglio stemming from Capitolium. The English word capitol...
. For a long time the Romans honored her with many ceremonies under the name Queen Juno. The remains were moved then sometime between the first century and the fourth century to the Netherlands.
In literature
Perhaps Juno's most prominent appearance in Roman literatureLatin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
is as the primary antagonistic force in Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, where she is depicted as a cruel and savage goddess intent upon supporting first Dido and then Turnus
Turnus
In Virgil's Aeneid, Turnus was the King of the Rutuli, and the chief antagonist of the hero Aeneas.-Biography:Prior to Aeneas' arrival in Italy, Turnus was the primary potential suitor of Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, King of the Latin people. Upon Aeneas' arrival, however, Lavinia is promised to...
and the Rutuli
Rutuli
The Rutuli or Rutulians were members of a legendary Italic tribe...
ans against Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
' attempt to found a new Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
in Italy. There has been some speculation—such as by Maurus Servius Honoratus, an ancient commentator on the Aeneid—that she is perhaps a conflation of Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...
with the Carthaginian
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
storm-goddess Tanit
Tanit
Tanit was a Phoenician lunar goddess, worshipped as the patron goddess at Carthage. Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the fifth century BCE onwards Tanit is associated with that of Baal Hammon...
in some aspects of her portrayal here.
Juno is also mentioned in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
in Act IV, Scene I. In this, she relates to Prospero as they are both leaders in their realm and have spirit like messengers who are very loyal (Juno has Iris, Prospero has Ariel). William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
repeatedly mentions Juno throughout the play Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra
Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...
, often in forms of exclamation by the characters.
Ancient source references
- Servius, In Aeneida ii.225
- Lactantius, Divinae institutions i.17.8