Juno

Summary

[Juno is one of the Dictionary's several articles which allude to the power of the feminine. Neither paganism nor Christianity had been able to erase the emblem of a great queen from the heart of public life whether she is Juno or the Virgin Mary. Like the Virgin, Juno must bear children and yet remain pure. She is deceived by Jupiter, tormented by jealousy, and must perform impossible tasks. Erasmus had sought vainly to have the Virgin expunged from Christian worship. Bayle supposes that myth and its exegesis permit an interplay between imagination and reality, and that metaphor releases insights into human conduct that the age had yet to fathom. In Remark (EE), Bayle recounts one of his light tales, but it anticipates, nevertheless, a psychology of the libidinous unconscious.]

Juno, sister and wife of Jupiter, was the daughter of Saturn and Rhea. Her father, being determined to devour his children for fear that one day they would dethrone him, gave her no more quarter than his two other daughters whom he had already eaten. But he was obliged to disgorge them some years later. He was given a brew which made him regurgitate all the children he had the inhumanity to ingest. Thus it came about that Juno was returned to the world.

Various accounts are given of her marriage to Jupiter.