On through the dark-blue vault of the stars,for women are thought to have easiest travail at the time of the full moon. [p. 119]
Through the moon that brings birth quickly;
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Why do they believe that the year belongs to
Jupiter, but the months to Juno?
Is it because Jupiter and Juno rule the invisible,
conceptual deities, but the sun and moon the visible
deities? Now the sun makes the year and the moon
the months ; but one must not believe that the sun
and moon are merely images of Jupiter and Juno, but
that the sun is really Jupiter himself in his material
form and in the same way the moon is Juno. This
is the reason why the Romans apply the name Juno
to our Hera, for the name means ‘young’ or ‘junior,’
so named from the moon. And they also call her
Lucina, that is ‘brilliant’ or ‘light-giving’ ; and they
believe that she aids women in the pangs of childbirth, even as the moon1:
1 Timotheus, Frag. 28 (ed. Wilamowitz-Möllendorff); Edmonds, Lyra Graeca, iii. p. 331; better Diels, Anthologia Lyrica Graeca, ii. p. 152. Cf. Moralia, 659 a; Macrobius, Saturnalia, vii. 16. 28; see also Roscher, Lexikon der gr. und. röm. Mythologie, vol. i. coll. 571-572.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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