Juno

Juno, daughter of Saturn and Ops, and sister and wife of Jupiter, ranks among the oldest deities of the Roman pantheon, with roots in Italic cults older than Rome itself. In archaic times she was linked to the sky, the light of the new moon and the cycles of the calendar, and the first day of each month (the calends) was consecrated to her. Before her full identification with the Greek Hera, she was worshipped in Latin and Etruscan cities under local invocations, such as the Juno Sospita of Lanuvium, armed with spear and goatskin. In Rome she received the epithet Juno Moneta, in whose temple on the Capitoline the state coinage was minted, from which the word money derives. Livy, Ovid and Virgil place her at the heart of Roman religious identity, as guarantor of sovereignty and protector of the city.

Juno presided over marriage, motherhood and the lives of married women, whom she accompanied from the wedding to childbirth. Under the invocation of Juno Lucina she protected childbirth and brought light to the newborn, while as Juno Pronuba she blessed conjugal unions. Each woman was believed to have her own juno, a tutelary spirit equivalent to the male genius. As Juno Regina she embodied the sovereignty of the State and the stability of the community, and as Juno Moneta she watched over public resources. Her characteristic attributes were the royal scepter, the diadem and the bridal veil, and above all the peacock, whose tail of eyes symbolized her perpetual vigilance. The pomegranate, emblem of legitimate fertility, and the cow, her sacred animal, completed her iconography.

Juno's myths revolve around her role as a wife outraged by Jupiter's infidelities, whose lovers and offspring she pursued with implacable zeal. In the tale of Io, transformed into a cow, she entrusted her guardianship to the giant Argus of the hundred eyes, and after Argus' death she transferred his eyes to the peacock's tail. Her resentment also pursued Hercules and the nymph Callisto. In Virgil's Aeneid she is the great antagonist of Aeneas and the Trojans, whom she harries because of the judgment of Paris and her love for Carthage, until she is finally reconciled with the destiny of Rome. She formed the Capitoline Triad together with Jupiter and Minerva, whose great temple crowned the Capitoline Hill. She was mother of Mars and Vulcan, sister of Ceres and Neptune, and the Roman equivalent of the Greek Hera.

Juno's cult was deeply rooted in the calendar and topography of Rome. The Matronalia, celebrated on the first of March, honored Juno Lucina, when matrons received gifts from their husbands and prayed for conjugal harmony. The Nonae Caprotinae of July, linked to Juno Caprotina, gathered free and enslaved women beneath a wild fig tree. Her temples dotted the city, from that of Juno Regina on the Aventine, brought from Veii through the rite of evocatio, to that of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline. The sacred geese of the latter, according to the tradition handed down by Livy, alerted the Romans to the night assault of the Gauls in 390 BC. Throughout Italy, invocations such as Juno Sospita and Juno Curitis preserved the warlike and communal traits of the goddess.