So Juno ended. I looked back. The wife of Hercules stood by, and in her face were signs of vigour. “If my mother were to bid me retire from heaven outright,” quoth she, “I would not tarry against my mother’s will. Now, too, I do not contend about the name of this season. I coax, and I act the part almost of a petitioner, and I should prefer to maintain my right by prayer alone. Thou thyself mayest haply favour my cause. My mother owns the golden Capitol, where she shares the temple, and, as is right, occupies the summit along with Jupiter. But all my glory comes from the naming of the month; the honour about which they tease me is the only one I enjoy. What harm was it if thou didst, O Roman, bestow the title of a month upon the wife of Hercules, and if posterity remembered and ratified the gift? This land also owes me something on account of my great husband. Hither he drove the captured kine: here Cacus, ill protected by the flames, his father’s gift, dyed with his blood the soil of the Aventine. But I am called to nearer themes. Romulus divided and distributed the people into two parts according to their years. The one was readier to give counsel, the other to fight; the one age advised war, the other waged it. So he decreed, and he distinguished the months by the same token. June is the month of the young (iuvenes); the preceding is the month of the old.”
So she spoke, and in the heat of rivalry the goddesses might have engaged in a dispute, wherein anger might have belied natural affection. But Concord came, at once the deity and the work of the pacific chief, her long tresses twined with Apollo’s laurel. When she had told how Tatius and brave Quirinus, and their two kingdoms and peoples, had united in one, and how fathers-in-law and sons-in-law were received in a common home, “The month of June,” quoth she, “gets its name from their junction.”
Thus were three causes pleaded. But pardon me, ye goddesses; the matter is not one to be decided by my judgement. Depart from me all equal. Pergamum was ruined by him who adjudged the prize of beauty: two goddesses mar more than one can make.
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