MINERVA. — An ancient divinity belonging to the worship of various Italic peoples. M., in fact, before her appearance at Rome, where she attained her greatest development, had long been worshipped especially among the Etruscans, where several sanctuaries were dedicated to her (Etruscan excavations near Bologna) dating from the 6th century B.C. and dedicated at the same time to Tinia (Iuppiter), Uni (Iuno), and Menrva (Minerva: an evident imitation of the Delphic triad Zeus-Hera-Athena). Nevertheless, especially on the evidence of the iconography, in which M. is already clearly inspired by the Greek Athena, most scholars accept that she was not originally Etruscan, but that the Etruscans probably adopted her from the Italic Falisci, among whom she appears mentioned in archaic inscriptions.
At Rome the cult of M. does not appear in the most ancient religion (the absence of her flamen, and of festivals in the “Numan” calendar); according to Varro, it was introduced from the Sabine country (Lingua Lat., V, 73), but it was almost certainly adopted from the Etruscans as early as the regal period. Indeed, in imitation of the Etruscan triad mentioned above, a “sacellum Iovis Iunonis Minervae” was consecrated in the Capitolium vetus on the Quirinal at a period preceding the temple of Capitoline Jupiter erected on the Capitoline Hill (Varro, op. cit., V, 158). Above all, however, it was in the latter temple, erected in 509 B.C., that the same triad was worshipped, and with its consecration M.’s official entry into Roman religion was achieved.
A third sanctuary of M., perhaps also dating from the regal period, was that on the Aventine. Since its day of dedication coincided with the Quinquatries festival (v. 19 marzo; originally sacred to Mars), the festival later became, in popular worship, also a festival of M.
Another highly important temple was that erected to M. capta at the foot of the Caelian, after the Romans, having destroyed Falerii in 241 B.C., imported to Rome the cult of Faliscan M. (Ovid, Fasti, 3, 845 ff.).
The primitive cult of M. in Roman religion, still free from the Greek influence of Athena Polias, was distinctly peaceful and, so to speak, social in character. She was indeed regarded as the inventor of the arts and crafts, and in her honour, during the five days of the March Quinquatries (19–23), called artificium dies, and during the corresponding festival in June, the various state-recognized guilds of artisans (especially those of the histriones and tibicines) assembled in the temple of M. on the Aventine, where they celebrated the goddess. Teachers also took part in this festival (to whom the pupils on that day offered the minerval or minervale munus), as did the guilds of physicians, who worshipped the goddess in the temple of Minerva medica on the Esquiline.
But the peaceful aspect was gradually tainted by the civic and warlike character of Athena. Thus, later M. became part of the warrior triad Mars Minerva Lua, quibus spolia hostium dicare ius fasque est (Livy, 45, 33, 2), and several of her temples (such as the one erected by Pompey, the other of Augustus, and especially the two of Domitian) by then reflected almost entirely—as did, moreover, the iconography of M.—the characteristics of the Greek Athena.
There was also a Palladium in Italy, believed to be the one from Troy, which was preserved as one of the most effective pledges of celestial protection. According to tradition, it had been received by Nautes (ancestor of the gens Nautia) from the hands of Diomedes himself, and was kept in the temple of Vesta together with the most sacred objects of the cult. Cesare D’Onofrio