JITNO AND lirRA, the Roman and Greek names of the queen of heaven and wife of the supreme divinity. The two conceptions have unfortunately been con founded, and hence their essential dissimilarity has been lost sight of—a dissimilarity, it may be remarked, as great as that which existed between the Roman and Greek char acter. We shall endeavor to distinguish between the two conceptions.
HERA (meaning "mistress"). the Greek goddess, was the daughter of Kronos and Rhea. She was the sister of Zeus, and afterwards became his wife. Her jealousy is proverbial, and was unfortunately too well founded, for Zeus was the reverse of a faith ful husband. In the Homeric poems she appears, on the whole, as an obstinate, quar relsome shrew, whose temper is a source of frequent discord between herself and her lord, whom, however, she greatly fears. She is represented as often spitefully favoring persons who were the objects of the displeasure of Zeus, and has to be punished for her disagreeable ways. Zeus scolds and even heats and on one occasion we read of his having. tied her hands and hung her up in the clouds. But she is, nevertheless, a female of majestic beauty, the grandest of the Olympian dames. As the only wedded goddess in the Greek mythology she naturally presided over marriage and at the birth of chil dren. She rode in a chariot drawn by two horses; and in her famous temple at Mt. Eubcea her statue, made of gold and ivory, bore a crown, symbolic of her queenly dignity. Her favorite residences were Argos, Sparta, and Mycenfe; but she had sanc tuaries in many parts of Greece. The Greek artists loved to represent her as a majestic
woman of middle age, possessing a maternal dignity of mien, with beautiful forehead, large eyes, and venerable expression. Homer repeatedly calls her •' the venerable, ox-eyed Hera." JUNO (the name is from the same root as Jupiter), the Roman goddess, was the queen of heaven, and, under the name of Regina, was worshiped in Italy at an early period. She bore the same relation to women that Jupiter did to men. Like the Greek Hera she took a special interest in marriage, whence her name of Aga or Jupaf s (the yoke maker); but she was also a kind of female providence, protecting the sex from the cradle to the grave. Her epithets, Virgipalis (the goddess "of virgins"), and Matrona (" of mothers"), indicate this. It is a very significant feature of the Roman character that Juno was also believed to be the guardian of the national finances, watchi9g over her people like a thrifty mother and housewife. A temple, containing the mint, was erected to her on the Capitoline as Juno Moneta (the money-coiner). She was besides the goddess of chastity, and prostitutes were forbidden to touch her altars. She had a multitude of other surnames, which we cannot afford space to enumerate. Her great festival was called the matronnlia, and was celebrated Mar. 1. Her month (June) was considered the most propitious for fruitful marriages; and even yet, after eighteen cen turies of Christianity, this old Roman faith lingers superstitiously in the popular mind.