IUNO MONETA, AEDES
-Iuno Moneta Regina in one inscription (
CIL vi. 362)- (templa, Ovid;
ναός, Plut.;
ἱεροϝ ῞Ηρας 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. I; 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 ioth October
1 (cf. CIL is. p. 331). 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 luno 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. Worterb. 2nd ed. 493). The mint was in the temple
during the last centuries of the republic, perhaps established there in 269
when silver coinagewas introduced into Rome (
Liv. vi. 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 (Hilsen, 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.
