Event

Speaker: Lisa Marie Mignone, Research Affiliate at NYU-ISAW

Title: "Iuno Loci: Juno at Home, Rome at War"

Abstract: Wrath.  Hatred.  Brutality.  These are the terms we generally associate with the Roman goddess Juno.  But who was this goddess Juno?  And how did she really feel about Rome?  Vergil crafts his Juno as a violent, vicious, and unrelenting character; but how did Romans see her outside of such poetic constructions?  Did ‘Gaius Romanus’ believe Juno to be an enemy of his state?  If so, when—if ever—did the queen goddess revise her stance? Or the Romans theirs?  How did the Romans worship her?  How did she respond?
 
“Iuno Loci” examines the relationship between Juno’s cult and Roman imperial expansion. A quick survey of how Juno was worshipped in the city of Rome synthesizes her spiritual domains and develops a more cohesive understanding of what were and, importantly, were not the deity’s roles at Rome. Next, the talk turns to two critical moments in the history of the Roman Republic: the wars with Veii (396) and with Carthage (264-146).  In both cases, the wars were fierce and on-going until the enemy’s city was annihilated.  In both cases, Roman authors imagined the enemies’ tutelary deity to have been Juno, and asserted that Roman victory was ultimately the consequence of Rome’s convincing the goddess to forsake her people. Thus, the second section treats Rome’s conquest of Veii; the third, increased worship of the goddess Juno at Rome during the Second Punic War (also known as the Hannibalic War).  The final section examines Rome’s treatment of Carthage’s goddess “Juno” and explores the limitations of using literary, and in particular, epic and other poetic texts as sources for historical reconstruction.

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