Queen of the Gods and Guardian of Rome

Juno was among the greatest of the Roman deities, the consort and sister of Jupiter and, with him and Minerva, one of the three gods of the Capitoline Triad whose temple crowned the Capitoline Hill and stood at the centre of Roman state religion. From an early date she was identified with the Greek Hera, and much of the mythology told of her, her jealousies, her quarrels with Jupiter, her hostility to his mortal loves, was drawn from the Greek stories. Yet her Roman character was broader and more civic than Hera's. She was pre-eminently a protector of the Roman state and of the Roman people, invoked at moments of crisis, and her cults reached back into the oldest layers of Latin religion at Rome, Lanuvium, Veii, and Praeneste. As Juno Regina, the Queen, she received the evocatio by which Rome ritually summoned an enemy's tutelary goddess to change sides, most famously from besieged Veii.