JUNO, the chief Roman and Latin goddess, and the special object of worship by women at all the critical moments of life. Two etymologies have been proposed, (I) from lovino, from same root as /up-piter, /ovis; but it does not appear that in early cult she is associated with Jupiter; (2) connected with luvenis, hence "young marriageable woman." That Juno was especially a deity of women, and represents in a sense the female principle of life, is seen in the fact that as every man had his genius, so every woman had her Juno; and the goddess herself may have been a development of this conception. The various forms of her cult all show her in close connection with women. As Juno Lucina she was invoked in time of child birth, and on March 1, the old Roman New Year's Day, the matrons met and made offerings at her temple in a grove on the Esquiline ; hence the day was known as the Matronalia. As Caprotina she was especially worshipped by female slaves on July 7 (Nonce Caprotinae) ; as Sospita she was invoked all over Latium as the saviour of women in their perils, and later as the saviour of the State ; and under a number of other titles, Cinxia, Unxia, Pronuba, etc., we find her taking a leading part in the ritual of
marriage. Her connection with the moon (Juno Covella) is ex plained by the alleged influence of the moon on the lives of women; thus she became the deity of the Kalends, or day of the new moon, when the wife of the rex sacrorum offered a lamb to her in the regia, and her husband made known to the people the day on which the Nones would fall. Thus she is brought into close relation with Janus, who also was worshipped on the Kalends by the rex sac rorum, and it may be that in the oldest Roman religion these two were closely connected. But in historical times she was associated with Jupiter in the great temple on the Capitoline hill as Juno Regina, the queed of all Junones or queen of heaven, as Jupiter (q.v.) there was Optimus Maximus, and under the same title she was enticed from Veii after its capture in 392 B.C., and settled in a temple on the Aventine. She thus was identified with Hera (q.v.).