In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Luna ( ) is the divine embodiment of the Moon. She is often presented as the female complement of the Sun, Sol, conceived of as a god. Luna is also sometimes represented as an aspect of the Roman triple goddess (diva triformis), along with Diana and either Proserpina or Hecate. Luna is not always a distinct goddess, but sometimes rather an epithet that specializes a goddess, since both Diana and Juno are identified as moon goddesses.C.M.C. Green, Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 73.

In Roman art, Luna attributes are the crescent moon plus the two-yoke chariot (biga). In the Carmen Saeculare, performed in 17 BC, Horace invokes her as the "two-horned queen of the stars" (siderum regina bicornis), bidding her to listen to the girls singing as Apollo listens to the boys.Horace, Carmen Saeculare, lines 33–36.

Luna's Greek counterpart was Selene. In Roman art and literature, myths of Selene are adapted under the name of Luna. The myth of Endymion, for instance, was a popular subject for Roman wall painting.Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, "Religion in the House", in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 188.

Function and worship Varro categorized Luna and Sol among the visible gods, as distinguished from invisible gods such as Neptune, and deified mortals such as Hercules.Varro, frg. 23 (Cardauns) = Tertullian, Ad nationes 2.2.14–2-; Attilio Mastrocinque, "Creating One's Own Religion: Intellectual Choices," in A Companion to Roman Religion, p. 383. She was one of the deities Macrobius proposed as the secret tutelary of Rome.Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans, p. 133. In Imperial cult, Sol and Luna can represent the extent of Roman rule over the world, with the aim of guaranteeing peace.William Van Andringa, "Religion and the Integration of Cities in the Empire in the Second Century AD: The Creation of a Common Religious Language," in A Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 94.

Varro listed Luna and Sol among the twelve de re rustica— deities vital to agriculture.Varro, De re rustica 1.1.4–6. Virgil likewise associated the two gods with agriculture, specifically as clarissima mundi lumina: the world's clearest source of light.Vergil, Georgics 1.5–25. Varro additionally named Luna among the twenty principal gods of Rome: the di selecti.Varro, as preserved by Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei 7.2.

Cult and temples

The Romans dated the cultivation of Luna as a goddess at Rome to the semi-legendary days of the kings. Titus Tatius was supposed to have imported the cult of Luna to Rome from the Sabines,Varro, De lingua latina 5.74; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.50.3. but Servius Tullius was credited with the creation of the Temple of Luna on the Aventine Hill, just below a temple of Diana.Orosius 5.12.3–10; De Vir. Ill. 65; Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 238. The anniversary of the temple founding (dies natalis) was celebrated annually on March 31.Ovid, Fasti 3.883–84; Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 238. It first appears in Roman literature in the story of how in 182 BC a windstorm of exceptional power blew off its doors, which crashed into the Temple of Ceres below it on the slope.Livy 40.2.2; Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 238. In 84 BC, it was struck by lightning, the same day the popularis leader Cinna was murdered by his troops.Appian, Bellum Civile 1.78. The Aventine temple may have been destroyed by the Great Fire of Rome during the reign of Nero.Tacitus, Annales 15.41; Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 238.

As Noctiluna ("Night-Shiner") Luna had a temple on the Palatine Hill, which Varro described as shining or glowing by night. Nothing else is known about the temple, and it is unclear what Varro meant.Varro, De lingua latina 5.68; Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary, p. 238.

Chariot of the Moon

Luna is often depicted driving a two-yoke chariot called a biga, drawn by horses or oxen. In Roman art, the charioteer Luna is regularly paired with the Sun driving a four-horse chariot (quadriga).

Isidore of Seville explains that the quadriga represents the sun's course through the four seasons, while the biga represents the Moon, "because it travels on a twin course with the sun, or because it is visible both by day and by night—for they yoke together one black horse and one white."Isidore, Etymologies 18.26, as translated by Stephen A. Barney et al., The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 368 online.

Luna in her biga was an element of Mithraic iconography, usually in the context of the tauroctony. In the mithraeum of S. Maria Capua Vetere, a wall painting that uniquely focuses on Luna alone shows one of the horses of the team as light in color, with the other a dark brown.M.J. Vermaseren, Mithraica I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere (Brill, 1971), pp. 14–15; Plato, Phaedrus 246.

A biga of oxen was also driven by Hecate, the chthonic aspect of the triple goddess in complement with the "horned" or crescent-crowned Diana and Luna.Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 733 (Migne); Friedrich Solmsen, "The Powers of Darkness in Prudentius' Contra Symmachum: A Study of His Poetic Imagination," Vigiliae Christianae 19.4 (1965), p. 248. The three-form Hecate (trimorphos) was identified by Servius with Luna, Diana, and Proserpina.Servius, note to Aeneid 6.118. According to the Archaic Greek poet Hesiod, Hecate originally had power over the heavens, land, and sea, not as in the later tradition Heaven, Earth, and underworld.Hesiod, Theogony 413f.

Gallery

See also List of Roman deities List of lunar deities

References

External links