Juno (Iuno)

GIUNONE (Iuno). — Italic and Roman goddess. The classical figure of the wife of Jupiter, familiar from Latin poetry, is merely a historical product determined largely by the influence of Greek poetry: G. in Italy has a long and varied past. The name of the goddess, not connected with the root of the name of Jupiter, as was once believed, belongs to the group of invenis, invenca, imix and contains within itself the meaning of young (woman?), new (moon?). The most ancient Italic and Roman cult of G. confirms these etymological interpretations. Outside Rome, G. is intensely venerated in almost all the centres of Latium, in Etruria (where the name Uni derives from the Latin Iuno), and in Tusco-Umbrian territory.

In various localities she assumes the importance of a poliade goddess, with the characteristics of a queen and a warrior. Thus in Latium, Iuno Sospes Mater Regina at Lanuvium, who in her iconography appears armed and clad in goat skin; in her sacred precinct, in a cave, a sacred serpent dwelt: when it did not accept the food offered to it by a woman (priestess?), this signified that she was not a virgin. At Ardea too and in Etruscan Veii G. bears the title of queen; at Tibur and Falerii (Civita Castellana) she has the epithet Curitis or Quiritis (from Sabine curis = spear?), and at Perugia she is also the goddess who protects the city. In this dominant position she is alone, without a divine “spouse” of equal rank. In Etruria and elsewhere (Tibur, Tusculum, and traces also at Rome), under Etruscan influence, she often forms a pair with Hercules. The characteristics of femininity predominate in her: the goat, whose skin she wears at Lanuvium and which is her victim at Falerii, expresses the aspect of fertility in female nature. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that already in the archaic period she could appear as the wife of Jupiter, as seems to have been the case at Ardea: not only because the identification of G. with the Homeric Hera was current in the Etruscan imagination, but also because the great goddess of chthonic nature could have been particularly suited to complement the world of the sky god. At Rome,

the oldest documents of the cult of G. are contained in the calendar known as that of Numa. Here the goddess forms a pair with Jupiter, even without any reference to a mythical marriage: while the days of the full moon (Idus) are sacred to Jupiter, the Kalendae, the darkest nights, those of the new moon, are sacred to G. She receives, in fact, under the name of Iuno Covella, a sacrifice on the first day of every month in the Curia Calabra; and the festivals of her most important temples all occupy the Kalendae of the various months. At the same time the goddess retains all her characteristics of fertile femininity. The Nonac Caprotinae (7 July) are one of her festivals, celebrated by women and particularly by female slaves, in licentious forms: the character of the festival, the epithet “Caprotina” also given to the goddess, and the importance assumed in the festival by a wild fig tree highlight the significance of her cult. Even in the Lupercalia—another festival celebrated by persons dressed in goat skins, the Luperci—G. has her part: the information that the festival was celebrated in her honour is isolated; but the goat-skin strap with which the Luperci struck women to make them fertile was significantly called amiculum Iunonis. Its use dates back, according to the cult legend, to a suggestion by Iuno Lucina. This goddess, whose epithet contains an allusion to light, appears in her cult as the protectress of women in childbirth; she has her sanctuary on the Esquiline; her festival, on 1 March, is a great women’s festival, popularly called the “Matronalia.” In inscriptions from Norba, Iuno Lucina appears as the wife of Jupiter. But Roman public worship disregards kinship among the gods: therefore, when the cult of Jupiter reaches its highest expression in the Capitoline cult, Iuno Regina, although she is not present in the three-celled temple, no longer possesses that equality of rank with the great God which is revealed by the structure of the calendar: she and Minerva stand beside Jupiter, in an equal and subordinate position, in the aedes Iovis capitolina. In the religious-historical period centred on the Capitoline cult, G. would still have temples and independent cults of great importance: in these her original characteristics survive, all the more so because a large part of such cults are Italic cults adopted and suitably transformed by Rome. Iuno Moneta on the citadel (the Capitoline), whose festival falls on 1 October, appears as the protectress of the city; sacred geese to the goddess are kept in her precinct. Iuno Regina is “evoked” from Veii by Camillus in 392 BC. Iuno Curritis comes from Falerii. Iuno Sospita, brought from Lanuvium, loses the serpent’s cave but retains the iconography: her sanctuary near the Theatre of Marcellus has its festival on 1 February. In the public consciousness G., following the model of the Olympian Hera, is regarded as the wife of Jupiter. She becomes, perhaps for this reason and though it is not known precisely from when, the goddess of marriage: in Iuno Pronuba and Iuno Iuga, the originally independent divinities Pronuba, Iuga, etc., perhaps become sublimated. In the syncretistic period G. is identified with foreign goddesses, among whom the most important is the Caelestis of Carthage.

Iuno, in another sense, is the particular divinity of every individual woman: just as a man has his Genius, a woman has her own Iuno. This is documented from the Augustan age onward, although the Genius of women is also mentioned. The goddesses too have their own Iuno: the Iuno Deae Diae appears in the ritual of the fratres Arvales.