The explanations of this month’s name also are doubtful. I will state them all, and you shall choose which you please. I’ll sing the truth, but some will say I lied, and think that no deities were ever seen by mortal. There is a god within us. It is when he stirs us that our bosom warms; it is his impulse that sows the seeds of inspiration. I have a peculiar right to see the faces of the gods, whether because I am a bard, or because I sing of sacred things. There is a grove where trees grow thick, a spot sequestered from every sound except the purl of water. There I was musing on what might be the origin of the month just begun, and was meditating on its name. Lo, I beheld the goddesses, but not those whom the teacher of ploughing beheld when he followed his Ascraean sheep; nor those whom Priam’s son compared in watery Ida’s dells; yet one there was of these. Of these there was one, the sister of her husband: she it was, I recognized, who stands within Jove’s citadel. I shivered, and, speechless though I was, my pallid hue betrayed my feeling; then the goddess herself removed the fears she had inspired. For she said, “O poet, minstrel of the Roman year, thou who hast dared to chronicle great things in slender couplets, thou hast won for thyself the right to look upon a celestial divinity by undertaking to celebrate the festivals in thy numbers.
But lest thou should be ignorant and led astray by vulgar error, know that June takes its name from mine. It is something to have married Jupiter and to be Jupiter’s sister. I doubt whether I am prouder of my brother or of my husband. If descent is considered, I was the first to call Saturn by the name of father: I was the first child whom fate bestowed on him. Rome was once named Saturnia after my sire: this land was the next he came to after heaven. If the marriage-bed counts for much, I am called the consort of the Thunderer, and my temple is joined to that of Tarpeian Jupiter. If a leman could give her name to the month of May, shall a like honour be grudged to me? To what purpose, then, am I called Queen and chief of goddesses? Why did they put a golden sceptre in my right hand? Shall the days (luces) make up a month and I be called Lucina after them, and yet shall I take a name from not a single month? Then indeed might I repent of having loyally laid aside my anger at the offspring of Electra and the Dardanian house. I had a double cause of anger: I fretted at the rape of Ganymede, and my beauty was misprized by the Idaean judge. It might repent me that I cherish not the battlements of Carthage, since my chariot and arms are there.
It might repent me that I have laid Sparta, and Argos, and my Mycenae, and ancient Samos, under the heel of Latium; add to these old Tatius, and the Faliscans, who worship Juno, and whom I nevertheless suffered to succumb to the Romans. Yet let me not repent, for there is no people dearer to me: here may I be worshipped, here may I occupy the temple with my own Jupiter. Mavors himself hath said to me, ‘ I entrust these walls to thee. Thou shalt be mighty in the city of thy grandson.’ His words have been fulfilled: I am celebrated at a hundred altars, and not the least of my honours is that of the month (named after me). Nevertheless it is not Rome alone that does me that honour: the inhabitants of neighbouring towns pay me the same compliment. Look at the calendar of woodland Aricia, and the calendars of the Laurentine folk and of my own Lanuvium; there, too, there is a month of June. Look at Tibur and at the sacred walls of the Praenestine goddess: there shalt thou read of Juno’s season. Yet Romulus did not found these towns; but Rome was the city of my grandson.”
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