Juno, Money & War

Juno was an old Italian goddess of central Italy and was related to Astarte, the Phoenician goddess who presided over fertility and war. As Juno Regina, the Queen of Heaven, her cult was brought to Rome from Veii in Etruria in the 5th Century B.C. As an Etruscan goddess, she was strongly influenced by the Greek goddess Hera, an old earth goddess and protectress of warriors, who was well known to the Greeks of Magna Graecia in southern Italy and Sicily. Juno later became completely assimilated to the Classical Greek view of Hera, being portrayed by Roman writers as the nagging wife of Zeus/Jupiter, the king of the gods, a stereotype which says more about Roman struggles with the feminine principle than it does about Juno herself.

The temple of Juno Moneta was built (or rebuilt) in the 4th Century B.C. on the Arx (Citadel of Rome) on the northern spur of the Capitoline Hill, site of the current Church of the Ara Coeli. The first mint in Rome was located in or near the temple, the Arx being fortified and secluded, as well as close to the military watch. It was Lucius Furius Camillus, who at the start of hostilities with the Aurunci, summoned the aid of Juno Moneta, vowing to build a temple to her in the event of victory. He must have called on the Queen of Heaven because her warlike nature was well attested. The tricky question, however, is: what does the word ‘Moneta’ mean? The traditional view posits a derivation from the Latin verb monere meaning ‘to warn, advise or remind’, hence ‘Juno the Warner’. The geese that were said to have been reared in her sanctuary sounded the alarm when the Gauls invaded Rome in 390 B.C. Without their warning, the city would have fallen. That said, it is unlikely that a noun derived from the verb monere would take the form moneta.

An alternative theory was put forward by Dr. Ernest Assmann, who claimed that the Punic word Machanat, which meant ‘fortified camp’ and was inscribed on the Carthaginian tetradrachm coins, gave rise to the epithet ‘Moneta’ (which the Romans likely pronounced ‘monat’). The tetradrachms were current in Sicily and Italy before the Punic wars and if the mint in Rome was established to coin money for the army, it is not difficult to see how apt its location would be in the very precinct of the spear-wielding Juno, goddess of the camp. The mint, with its furnaces and the hammering of its operatives, would not have been a fit site for the sanctuary of a goddess perceived to be no more than the divine protectress of women and marriage. Hence, the epithet ‘Moneta’ must have had both admonitory and martial connections, as befitted its application to a warrior goddess and the mother of Mars.

The other connection, of course, must be money, for the Latin word moneta came to mean not only the mint itself, but the money coined therein. Money, after all, was the means of prosecuting the wars over which Juno presided. It could be that the epithet ‘Moneta’ derived both from the ‘Machanat’ coinage that originated in Carthage, a city with which Juno would come to have especially close links, as well as from the particular characteristics associated with the goddess as patron of soldiers. In a world of aggressive financial takeovers, money today―alas!―is itself a form of warfare as well as a general sower of strife within and among nations. It could and should still act as a warning to us, but for that to happen we need to allow Juno true parity with Jupiter and free rein to broadcast the blessings of unity which the spirit of marriage in the widest sense can plant among men and women.