Juno (mythology)
Juno is a goddess in the ancient Roman religion, the protector and special counsellor of the state. She equates to Hera, queen of the gods in Greek mythology and a goddess of marriage. A daughter of Saturn and Ops, she is the sister and wife of Jupiter and the mother of Mars, Vulcan, Bellona, Lucina and Juventas. Like Hera, her sacred animal is the peacock. Her Etruscan counterpart is Uni, and she was said to also watch over the women of Rome. As the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire, Juno was called Regina and is a member of the Capitoline Triad, centered on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, which also includes Jupiter and Minerva, goddess of wisdom.
Juno's own warlike aspect among the Romans is apparent in her attire. She was often shown armed and wearing a goatskin cloak. The traditional depiction of this warlike aspect was assimilated from the Greek goddess Athena, who bore a goatskin, or a goatskin shield, called the Aegis. Juno was also shown wearing a diadem.
Etymology
The name Juno was once popularly thought to be connected to Iove, originally as Diuno and Diove from *Diovona. Although this etymology still receives some support, a derivation was later proposed from iuven-, through a syncopated form iūn-. This etymology became widely accepted after it was endorsed by Georg Wissowa.Iuuen- is related to Latin aevum and Greek aion 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.
Ancient etymologies associated Juno's name with iuvare, "to aid, benefit", and iuvenescere, "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 epithets, 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. However, other epithets of Juno have wider implications and are less thematically linked.While her connection with the idea of vital force, the fullness of vital energy, and 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. Outside Latium in Campania at Teanum she was Populona, in Umbria at Pisaurum Lucina, at Terventum in Samnium Regina, 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 Georges Dumézil and Vsevolod Basanoff can be traced back to the Indoeuropean trifunctional ideology: as Regina and Moneta she is a sovereign deity, as Sespeis, Curitis and Moneta she is an armed protectress, as Mater and Curitis 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. 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. At Rome on the Kalends of every month the pontifex minor invoked her, under the epithet Covella, when from the curia Calabra he 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 is often named Iunonius after her.
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. Others 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 connections, which would then change according to circumstances: thus in men she incarnates the iuvenes, a word often used to designate 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. Others 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.
Juno Sospita and Lucina
The rites of the month of February and the Nonae Caprotinae of July 5 offer a depiction of Juno's roles in the spheres of fertility, war, and regality.In the Roman calendar, February is a month of universal purification, and begins the new year. In book II of his Fasti, Ovid derives the month's name from februae ; lustrations designed to remove spiritual contamination or ritual pollution accumulated in the previous year. On the 1st of the month, a black ox was sacrificed to Helernus, a minor underworld deity whom Dumézil takes as a god of vegetation related to the cult of Carna/Crane, a nymph who may be an image of Juno Sospita. On the same day, Juno's dies natalis as Juno Sospita was celebrated at her Palatine temple. On February 15 the Lupercalia festival was held, in which Juno was involved as Juno Lucina. This is usually understood to be a rite of purification and fertility. A goat was sacrificed and its hide cut into strips, used to make whips known as februum and amiculus Iunonis, wielded by the Luperci. The Juno of this day bears the epithet of Februalis, Februata, Februa. On the last day of the month, leading into March 1, she was celebrated as protectress of matrons and marriages. The new year began on March 1. The same was celebrated as the birthday of Rome's founder and first king, Romulus, and the peaceful union of Romans and Sabine peoples through treaty and marriage after their war, which was ended by the intervention of women.
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".
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 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.
One temple of Juno Sospita was located near the Temple of Cybele northwest of the Palatine Hill within the Pomerium. This was located near or under the site of the 6th century church of San Teodoro, which has an unusual circular shape similar to that of the nymphaeum later misnamed the Temple of Minerva Medica. In his early 1st-century poem Fasti, Ovid states that by his time this temple had become so dilapidated that it was no longer discernible "because of the injuries of time". A later Temple of Juno Sospita was vowed by the consul G. Cornelius Cethegus in and consecrated and opened in This temple was located at the Roman vegetable market beside Temples of Hope and Piety and near the Carmental Gate. It was apparently this temple that was later reported as having fallen into disrepute by, when it was stained by episodes of prostitution and a bitch delivered her puppies beneath the temple's statue of the goddess. The consul L. Julius Caesar secured its restoration with a Senatorial decree and relics from the temple remain today.