MINERVA. - An ancient divinity belonging to the cult of various Italic peoples. M., in fact, before Rome, where she had her greatest development, was venerated from ancient times especially among the Etruscans, where certain sanctuaries were dedicated to her (Etruscan excavations near Bologna) dating back to 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 from the iconography, in which M. is already clearly inspired by the Greek Athena, it is admitted by most that she was not originally Etruscan, but that the Etruscans most probably took her from the Italic Faliscans, among whom she appears mentioned on archaic inscriptions.
In Rome the cult of M. does not appear in the most ancient religion (the absence of a flamen for her, the absence of festivals in the "Numan" calendar); it, which according to Varro would have been introduced by a Sabine woman (Lingua Lat., V, 73), was almost certainly taken from the Etruscans still in the regal period. In fact, in the likeness of the Etruscan triad - mentioned above - a "sacellum Iovis Iunonis Minervae" was consecrated in the Capitolium vetus of the Quirinal in an era prior to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus erected on the Capitoline (Varro, op. cit., V, 158). But above all in this latter temple, erected in 509 B.C., the same triad is found venerated, with which the official entry of M. into the Roman religion was consecrated.
A third sanctuary of M., perhaps also from the regal period, was that on the Aventine, whose day of dedication, coinciding with the festival of the Quinquatria (v. 19 March; originally sacred to Mars), caused these to become later, in popular cult, also festivals of M.
Another very important temple was that erected to M. capta, at the foot of the Caelian, after the Romans in 241 B.C., having destroyed Falerii, imported to Rome the cult of the Faliscan M. (Ovid, Fasti, 3, 845 ff.).
The primitive cult of M. in the Roman religion, still free from the Greek influence of Athena Polias, had a frankly peaceful and, so to speak, social character. She was in fact held to be the inventor of the arts and crafts, and in her honor during the 5 days of the March Quinquatria (19-23), called artificium dies, and in the corresponding ones of June, the various guilds of craftsmen recognized by the State (especially those of the histriones and the tibicines) gathered in the temple of M. on the Aventine where they celebrated the goddess. Teachers also took part in this festival (to whom the pupils offered on that day the minerval or minervale munus) and the guilds of physicians, who venerated the goddess in the temple of Minerva medica on the Esquiline.
But the peaceful aspect gradually became contaminated with the poliad and warrior aspect of Athena. Thus, later M. becomes part of the warrior triad Mars Minerva Lua, quibus spolia hostium dicare ius fasque est (Livy, 45, 33, 2) and various of her temples (such as that erected by Pompey, the other by Augustus and above all the two of Domitian) now reflect almost entirely (as indeed does the iconography of M.) the characteristics of the Greek Athena.
In Italy too there was a Palladium, held to be that of Troy, which was kept as one of the most effective pledges of heavenly protection. It, according to tradition, had been received by Nautes (ancestor of the gens Nautia) from the very hands of Diomedes, and was kept in the temple of Vesta with the most sacred objects of the cult.
Cesare D'Onofrio