Juno
Juno is identified with Hera and shares her position as consort of the king of the gods, but Juno's Roman cult carried civic duties Hera's Greek worship did not centralize in one figure: as Juno Regina she sat beside Jupiter and Minerva in the Capitoline Triad, and as Juno Moneta, 'Juno who warns,' her temple on the Arx housed Rome's mint - the origin of the English words 'money' and 'mint.'
Juno, queen of the Roman gods
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Core Myth
Juno occupied the chamber beside Jupiter in the great temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill, with Minerva completing the Capitoline Triad in a third chamber; as Juno Regina, "Juno the Queen," she shared in Jupiter's civic authority in a way Hera's Greek cult, scattered across many independent city sanctuaries, never centralized in a single national shrine. Juno also governed marriage, childbirth, and the protected life of Roman women specifically, giving her a domestic religious role parallel to, but institutionally more organized than, Hera's equivalent Greek patronage.
Her most distinctly Roman title was Juno Moneta, commonly translated "Juno who warns" or "the admonisher." A temple to Juno under this title stood on the Arx, the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill, and by the mid-Republic that temple housed the Roman state mint. The Latin word moneta, from this cult title, passed through the striking of coins there into the English words "money" and "mint" themselves - an etymological legacy with no equivalent anywhere in Hera's own cult vocabulary.
Is Juno the same goddess as Hera?
Romans identified Juno with Hera and gave her the same position as consort of the king of the gods, but Juno's Roman cult was more institutionally centralized: as Juno Regina she held a formal chamber in the state temple on the Capitoline Hill beside Jupiter and Minerva, a single national shrine with no real Greek equivalent for Hera's own, more scattered civic worship.
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.55
What was the Capitoline Triad?
The Capitoline Triad was Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, worshipped together in three chambers of Rome's great Capitoline temple, with Juno occupying the chamber to one side of Jupiter's central cella. The arrangement made these three deities the formal center of Roman state religion in a single shared building.
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.55
Why is Juno called Moneta, and how does that connect to the word money?
Moneta, usually translated "the one who warns" or "the admonisher," was a specific cult title for Juno tied to a temple on the Arx, the northern peak of the Capitoline Hill. Rome's state mint operated from that temple, and moneta passed from the goddess's title through the coins struck there into the English words "money" and "mint" by way of Old French and Old English borrowings.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.65
Did geese really save Rome from the Gauls because of Juno?
Roman tradition credits the sacred geese kept in Juno's Capitoline temple with waking the city's defenders during a night attack by Gallic raiders in 390 BCE, after the city's watchdogs had failed to notice the assault. Ancient sources present this as an actual historical event with a religious explanation for why geese, rather than dogs, were honored on the Capitoline afterward, though the story functions partly as an origin legend for that specific ritual honor.
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 5.47
What role did Juno play for Roman women specifically?
Juno governed marriage and childbirth and was invoked as a protector of women's lives broadly, a domestic religious function that paralleled Hera's own Greek patronage of marriage but was organized through specifically Roman women's cults and associations that had no direct Greek counterpart in form.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.65
Later Traditions
Roman legend credited the sacred geese kept in Juno's temple on the Capitoline with saving the city during the Gallic siege of 390 BCE: when Gallic raiders attempted a night assault, the geese, more alert than the city's watchdogs, honked and woke the defenders in time to repel the attack, a story Roman authors used to explain why geese, not dogs, received continued honor on the Capitoline afterward. Plutarch says Rome's Fortune did not lack a voice: the sacred geese kept near Juno's temple raised the alarm (On the Fortune of the Romans 325c). Juno's civic and matronal roles both persisted into the Empire, with women's religious associations continuing to invoke her patronage of marriage and childbirth well after her original Capitoline cult had become one temple among many imperial-era shrines.
Virgil makes Juno the driving force of the war in Latium. She calls up the Fury Allecto to rouse Turnus against the Trojan marriage (Aeneid 7.286-474). Only when Jupiter forbids more does she give way, and he grants that the Latins keep their name (Aeneid 12.791-842).
In his account of the Lupercalia, Ovid places a grove of Juno on the Esquiline. There a voice from the trees orders a sacred goat to enter the Italian mothers, and the women offer their backs to be struck with strips of goat hide (Fasti 2.425-448).
Denarius (Coin) Depicting the Goddess Juno Sospita - Italy, 105 BCE, Silver
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1923.1260. CC0
Lineage
See the full family tree9 recorded relations, each with the ancient line behind it.
Parents
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disputed
Ovid names Ops as mother of Juno, Ceres and Vesta by Saturn's seed.
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Jupiter addresses Juno as his sister and Saturn's other child. In the same scene Virgil calls her Saturn's daughter.
Siblings
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Also husband and wife: Roman religion's central divine pair, worshipped together with Minerva at the Capitoline temple.
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Ovid lists Juno, Ceres and Vesta as the three daughters of Ops and Saturn.
Children
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disputed
Ovid's Fasti gives Mars a distinctly Roman origin: Juno conceives him alone, using a fertility flower Flora gives her, after Jupiter fathers Minerva without a mother. This differs from the joint Zeus-and-Hera parentage assumed for the Greek Ares under interpretatio romana, and no surviving Roman-named source states that joint parentage explicitly.
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disputed
An alternate tradition holds that Juno conceived Vulcan without a father, jealous after Jupiter bore Minerva alone - the same parthenogenesis motif Greek myth assigns to Hera and Hephaestus.
Also Connected
8 recorded connections, each with the ancient line behind it.
Allies
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Juno sends Alecto to rouse Turnus to war and shields him until Jupiter orders her to withdraw. She then gives up his cause and asks that the Latins keep their name.
Enemies
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In Virgil's Aeneid, Juno's anger at the Trojan race drives the storms and hardships that keep Aeneas from Italy.
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In Ovid Juno seizes Calisto by the hair after Arcas is born and turns her into a bear.
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In Ovid's account of his death, Hercules calls on Juno to feast on the suffering her enmity has caused.
Connected
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Juno bribes Aeolus with the nymph Deiopea as a wife in exchange for unleashing the winds against the Trojan fleet, and Aeolus agrees, telling her that whatever standing he holds is hers to grant.
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Catullus's hymn to Diana invokes her as "Juno Lucina" for women in childbirth, a shared cult title rather than a genealogical or narrative connection between the two goddesses.
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In Plutarch's account of the Gallic night attack, Rome's Fortune raised the alarm through the sacred geese kept at the temple of Juno (On the Fortune of the Romans 325c).
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Juno bursts open the Gates of War that Janus guards (Aeneid 7.620-622). In Ovid's Fasti she removes the bolts from Rome's gate for the Sabines, and Janus blocks them with hot springs (Fasti 1.265-272).
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Mythology
Appears In
Equivalent Figures
Related Terms
Referenced By
Sources
- Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.55
- Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 5.47
- Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.65
- Virgil, Aeneid 7.286-474
- Virgil, Aeneid 12.791-842
- Ovid, Fasti 2.425-448
- Plutarch, On the Fortune of the Romans 325c
- Georges Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion (1970)