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 p289  Aedes Junonis Monetae

Article on pp289‑290 of

Samuel Ball Platner (as completed and revised by Thomas Ashby):
A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome,
London: Oxford University Press, 1929.

Iuno Moneta — Iuno Moneta Regina in one inscription (CIL VI.362) — AEDES (templa, Ovid; ναός, Plut.; ἱερὸν Ἥρας Μονήτης, Suidas), a temple vowed by M. Furius Camillus during the war with the Aurunci in 345 B.C., erected by duoviri appointed by the senate pro amplitudine populi Romani, and dedicated in 344 (Liv. VII.28.4‑6). It was on the arx, on the site formerly occupied by the house of M. Manlius Capitolinus (q.v.), which had been destroyed in 384 B.C. (Liv. VI.20.13; Val. Max. VI.3.1; Ov. Fast. I.638; VI.34, 183). Titus Tatius is also said to have lived on this site (Plut. Rom. 20; Solin. I.21). The temple was dedicated on 1st June (Ov. Fast. VI.183; Macrob. I.12.30; Hemer. Venus. ad Kal. Iun.; Fast. Ant. ap. NS 1921, 97, which also mentions a festival on 10th October​1 (cf. CIL I2 p331). In it were kept the libri lintei (Liv. IV.7.12, 20.8), and it is mentioned in connection with the prodigia for 196 B.C. (Liv. XXXIII.26.8: ad Monetam duarum hastarum spicula arserant). It is altogether probable that this temple of Camillus replaced an earlier cult centre of Iuno Moneta, to which reference is made by Plutarch (Cam. 27), when speaking of the sacred geese that were kept around her temple in 390 B.C.

Various explanations were given by the Roman antiquarians of the epithet Moneta. Cicero (de Div. I.101) says that it was derived from the warning voice of the goddess, heard in the temple on the occasion of an earthquake, 'ut sue plena procuratio fieret'. Suidas (s.v. Μονῆτα) states that during the war with Tarentum the Romans, needing money, obtained it by following the advice of Juno; and that in gratitude they gave her the epithet Moneta and decided to establish the mint in her temple. None of the explanations yet suggested is satisfactory, and even the usual derivation of the word Moneta from moneo is open to doubt (Walde, Etym. Wörterb. 2nd ed. 493). The mint was in the temple during the last centuries of the republic, perhaps established there in 269 when silver coinage was introduced into Rome (Liv. IV.20.13; Cic. ad Att. VIII.7.3), and was called Moneta or ad Monetam. It seems to have been removed at the end of the first century (see Moneta), and nothing further is heard of the temple (Jord. I.2.108‑111; WR 190; Rosch. II.592‑594, 603, 612; RE X.1118).

Not a trace of it has been found in the works for the erection of the monument to Victor Emmanuel, and it may have occupied the site of the transepts of the church of S. Maria in Aracoeli (Hülsen, Bilder aus der Geschichte des Kapitols (Rome, 1899), 31). For an antefix from an earlier temple on the site see Cons. 323, No. 103 and reff.

The Authors' Notes:

1 Mancini conjectures that a primitive altar in her honour was dedicated on 1st June, and the temple on 10th October.

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