[3] Although this etymology still receives some support, a derivation was later proposed from iuven- (as in Latin iuvenis, "youth"), through a syncopated form iūn- (as in iūnix, "heifer", and iūnior, "younger").

The epithet Lucina[13] is particularly revealing since it reflects two interrelated aspects of the function of Juno: cyclical renewal of time in the waning and waxing of the moon and protection of delivery and birth (as she who brings to light the newborn as vigour, vital force).

[16] Others though prefer to dismiss her aspects of femininity and fertility[17] and stress only her quality of being the spirit of youthfulness, liveliness and strength, regardless of sexual connexions, which would then change according to circumstances: thus in men she incarnates the iuvenes, a word often used to designate soldiers, hence resulting in a tutelary deity of the sovereignty of peoples; in women capable of bearing children, from puberty on she oversees childbirth and marriage.

In book II of his Fasti, Ovid derives the month's name from februae (expiations);[20] lustrations designed to remove spiritual contamination or ritual pollution accumulated in the previous year.

On the 1st of the month, a black ox was sacrificed to Helernus, a minor underworld deity whom Dumézil takes as a god of vegetation related to the cult of Carna/Crane, a nymph who may be an image of Juno Sospita.

The same was celebrated as the birthday of Rome's founder and first king, Romulus, and the peaceful union of Romans and Sabine peoples through treaty and marriage after their war, which was ended by the intervention of women.

[26] This unity is underlined by the role of Faunus in the aetiologic story told by Ovid and the symbolic relevance of the Lupercal:[clarification needed][27] asked by the Roman couples at her lucus how to overcome the sterility that ensued the abduction of the Sabine women, Juno answered through a murmuring of leaves "Italidas matres sacer hircus inito" "That a sacred ram cover the Italic mothers".

On that day the Roman free and slave women picnicked and had fun together near the site of the wild fig (caprificus): the custom implied runs, mock battles with fists and stones, obscene language and finally the sacrifice of a male goat to Juno Caprotina under a wildfig tree and with the using of its lymph.

This festival had a legendary aetiology in a particularly delicate episode of Roman history and also recurs at (or shortly after) a particular time of the year, that of the so-called caprificatio when branches of wild fig trees were fastened to cultivated ones to promote insemination.

Moreover, according to Basanoff these too (breasts, milky juice, genitalia, present or symbolised in the fig and the goat) in general, and here in particular, have an inherently apotropaic value directly related to the nature of Juno.

Palmer accepts Cicero's etymology as a possibility while adding mons mount, hill, verb e-mineo and noun monile referred to the Capitol, place of her cult.

[73] Palmer[74] thinks she is to be identified with Juno Populona of later inscriptions,[75] a political and military poliadic (guardian) deity who had in fact a place in the Capitoline temple and was intended to represent the Regina of the king.

The persistence of a female presence in her cult through the centuries down to the lectisternium of 217 BC, when the matronae collected money for the service,[83] and to the times of Augustus during the ludi saeculares in the sacrifices to Capitoline Juno are proof of the resilience of this foreign tradition.

Perhaps the Romans were not completely satisfied with this solution as in 194 BC consul C. Cornelius Cethegus erected a temple to the Juno Sospita of Lanuvium in the Forum Holitorium (vowed three years earlier in a war with the Galli Insubri[122]); in it the goddess was honoured in military garb.

While Dumézil's refusal of seeing a Greek influence in Italic Junos looks difficult to maintain[124] in the light of the contributions of archaeology, his comparative analysis of the divine structure is supported by many scholars, as M. Renard and J. Poucet.

Dumézil opines that the theologies of ancient Latium could have preserved a composite image of the goddess and this fact, notably her feature of being Regina, would in turn have rendered possible her interpretatio as Hera.

[136] Praeneste offers a glimpse into original Latin mythology: the local goddess Fortuna is represented as nursing two infants, one male and one female, namely Jove (Jupiter) and Juno.

[140] Dumézil has elaborated an interpretative theory according to which this contradiction would be an intrinsic, fundamental feature of Indoeuropean deities of the primordial and sovereign level, as it finds a parallel in Vedic religion.

[141] The contradiction would put Fortuna both at the origin of time and into its ensuing diachronic process: it is the comparison offered by Vedic deity Aditi, the Not-Bound or Enemy of Bondage, that shows that there is no question of choosing one of the two apparent options: as the mother of the Aditya she has the same type of relationship with one of his sons, Dakṣa, the minor sovereign who represents the Creative Energy, being at the same time his mother and daughter, as is true for the whole group of sovereign gods to which she belongs.

The association of the two gods is reflected on the human level at the difficult time of labours as is apparent in the custom of putting a key, symbol of Janus, in the hand of the woman with the aim of ensuring an easy delivery, while she had to invoke Juno Lucina.

[159] Even though the origins of Hercules are undoubtedly Greek his figure underwent an early assimilation into Italic local religions and might even preserve traces of an association to Indoiranian deity Trita Apya that in Greece have not survived.

[164] Even though no text links the cults of the Ara maxima with Juno Sospita, one of her temples was located in the Forum Olitorium near the Carmental Gate, one of the sites of the legend of Hercules in Rome.

[170] Renard thinks Dumézil's opposition to such a view is to be upheld: Bayet's words though did not deny the existence of local warlike Junos, but only imply that at a certain time they received the influence of the Heras of Lacinion and Sele, a fact that earned them the epithet of Argive and a Greek connotation.

[179] According to Georg Wissowa and K. Latte, Genius (from the root gen-, whence gigno bear or be born, archaic also geno) would designate the specific virile generative potency, as opposed to feminine nature, reflected in conception and delivery, under the tutelage of Juno Lucina.

It was an appropriate date for her celebration since the month of February was considered a perilous time of passage, the cosmic year then coming to an end and the limits between the world of the living and the underworld being no longer safely defined.

[199] Renard thinks the cult of Hera in great emporia such as Croton, Posidonia, Pyrgi might be a counter to Aphrodite's, linked to sacred prostitution in ports, as the sovereign of legitimate marriage and family and of their sacrality.

At Pyrgi, one of the ports of Caere, excavations had since 1956 revealed the existence of a sacred area, intensely active from the last quarter of the 4th century, yielding two documents of a cult of Uni.

It is debated whether such an identification was linked to a transient political stage corresponding with Tefarie Velianas's Carthaginian-backed tyranny on Caere as the sanctuary does not show any other trait proper to Phoenician ones.

[205] The mention of the goddess of the sanctuary as being named locally Eileitheia and Leucothea by different Greek authors narrating its destruction by the Syracusean fleet in 384 BC, made the picture even more complex.

[217] Perhaps Juno's most prominent appearance in Roman literature is as the primary antagonistic force in Virgil's Aeneid, where she is depicted as a cruel and savage goddess intent upon supporting first Dido and then Turnus and the Rutulians against Aeneas' attempt to found a new Troy in Italy.