Uni was the supreme goddess

Goddess

A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing....

 of the Etruscan

Etruscan mythology

The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC...

 pantheon and the patron goddess of Perugia

Perugia

Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....

. Uni was identified by the Etruscans as their equivalent of Juno

Juno (mythology)

Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister 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...

 in Roman mythology

Roman mythology

Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...

 and 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...

 in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

.

Uni appears in the Etruscan text on 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...

 as the translation of the Phoenicia

Phoenicia

Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...

n goddess Astarte

Astarte

Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...

. Livy states (Book V, Ab Urbe Condita) that Juno was an Etruscan

Etruscan mythology

The Etruscans were a diachronically continuous population, with a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing, in the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC...

 goddess of the Veientes

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...

, who was ceremonially adopted into the Roman pantheon when Veii was sacked in 396BC. This seems to refer to Uni. She also appears on the Liver of Piacenza

Liver of Piacenza

The Liver of Piacenza is an Etruscan artifact found on September 26, 1877 near Gossolengo, in the province of Piacenza, Italy. It is a life-sized bronze model of a sheep's liver covered in Etruscan writings. The writings on the liver are names of Etruscan deities. It is believed that the bronze...

.

With her husband Tinia

Tinia

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....

 and Menrva

Menrva

Menrva was an Etruscan goddess of war, art, wisdom and health. She contributed much of her character to Roman Minerva....

, she was part of a powerful triumvirate.

In the Etruscan tradition, it is Uni who grants access to immortality to the demigod Hercle (Greek 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...

, Latin Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

) by offering her breast milk to him.