LUCINA. — Epithet of Juno, who under this name had a sanctuary on the Esquiline. This sanctuary, whose festival was celebrated on 1 March, occupied the site of an earlier lucus (sacred grove). The ancients explained the appellation L. by referring it either to birth (the goddess gives lucem nascentibus) or to the light of the moon; in any case, the goddess was always regarded as the goddess of childbirth. At every birth an obol was paid into the treasury of her temple (just as at every death into that of Libitina, and at every coming of age into that of Iuventas).
BIBL.: G. Wissova, Religion und Kultur der Römer, 2nd ed., Munich 1912, p. 183 ff.; E. L. Shield, Juno, Northampton, Mass., 1926, p. 157 ff.; C. Koch, Der römische Iuppiter, Frankfurt am Main 1937, pp. 57 ff., 108 ff. Angelo Brelich