The Many Junos: Childbirth, Warning, and the Mint

Roman religion multiplied its gods by function and place, and Juno appears under a string of cult-titles that show the range of her care. Juno Lucina was the goddess who brought children to the light, invoked in childbirth and honoured at the Matronalia. Juno Sospita, the Saviour, worshipped at Lanuvium in goatskin and with spear and shield, was a warlike protectress whose rites Rome maintained as a public cult. Juno Moneta, the Warner or Adviser, had her temple on the Capitoline arx; because the Roman mint was housed beside it, her epithet Moneta became, through Latin, the ancestor of the English words money and mint.

Roman thought also gave every woman her own guardian spirit, the iuno, the female counterpart of a man's genius, so that the goddess was mirrored in the life of each individual. This layering, one named goddess expressed through many localised and functional cults, is characteristic of the Roman way with the divine.