Moneta
In Roman mythology, Moneta (Latin Monēta) was a title given to two separate goddesses: It was the name of the goddess of memory (identified with the Greek goddess Mnemosyne), and it was an epithet of Juno, called Juno Moneta (Latin Iūno Monēta). The latter's name is the source of numerous words in English and the Romance languages, including “money" and "mint".
For other uses, see Moneta (disambiguation).
The cult of the goddess Moneta was established largely under the influence of Greek religion, which featured the cult of Mnemosyne ("Μνημοσύνη"), the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses. The goddess's name is derived from Latin monēre (which means to remind, warn, or instruct). She is mentioned in a fragment of Livius Andronicus' Latin Odyssey: Nam diva Monetas filia docuit ("since the divine daughter of Moneta has taught...", frg. 21 Büchner), which may be the equivalent of either Od. 8,480-1 or 488.
The epithet Moneta that was given to Juno, in contrast, is more likely to have derived from the Greek word "moneres" ("μονήρης"), meaning "alone”, or “unique". By the time Andronicus was writing, the folk etymology of monēre was widely accepted, and so he could plausibly transmute this epithet into a reference to separate goddess - the literary (though not the religious) counterpart of the Greek Mnemosyne.
Coinage[edit]
"Moneta" retained the meanings of "money" and "die" well into the Middle Ages and appeared often on minted coins. For example, the phrase moneta nova is regular on coins of the low countries and the rhineland in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, with the "nova", Latin for "new", not necessarily signifying a new type or variety of coin.[3]
In culture[edit]
Moneta is a central figure in John Keats' poem "The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream".