Month of Juno

The Peacock Complaining to Juno by Gustave Moreau 1881.

The story goes that the month of June got its name from the Roman Goddess, Juno. She has a reputation as the Goddess whose job includes the well-being of women, the director of marriage (hence the large number of June brides), and overseer of births. Her job title may imply that she was a nice, loving, fairy-godmother type, but not so. Instead, she was a murdering warrior who was insanely jealous of her brother/husband, Jupiter, with whom she enjoyed the un-ladylike sport of throwing lightning bolts.

The above artwork of Juno is by the Symbolist French painter, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), who loved to use mythological figures as subjects. Notice the peacock, Juno's symbolic animal, which you will find in almost all paintings of her. The other small bird to the right is a nightingale. The myth that this painting was based on tells us that Juno's favorite bird was the peacock but when she met him he had no beautiful tail feathers. The homely Peacock came to Juno to complain that he wanted a singing voice like the nightingale rather than his own alarming shriek. According to the story, Juno appeased her bird friend by granting him beautiful tail feathers rather than a beautiful voice. The large brown eagle to the left may represent Juno's husband, Jupiter, or he may be floating around because in some versions of the fable, the saucy peacock also complains because he is not able to fly like the eagle. This would explain the artwork's title, since the peacock has his beautiful feathers but is still complaining. You just can't make some birds happy.

The following is the Greek Juno (aka Hera in Greek mythology)/peacock myth which is more akin to Juno's personality. Juno was insanely jealous of her husband's affairs and would often torment and murder the offspring of his infidelities. Jupiter was carrying on with the nymph, Io. Juno found out, so Jupiter transformed Io into a cow as a disguise. Being the wise cheating husband-catcher that she was, Juno asked her husband if she could have the cow and then appointed Argus, the one hundred eyed monster, to guard her new possession. Argus was well designed for guard duty because he could sleep with at least one eye open at all times. Jupiter was obliged to kill the cow so he hired Hermes to play sweet music to put all of the 100 watchful eyes of Argus to sleep, allowing the deed to be done. In her anger at Argus' failed responsibility, Juno took all of Argus' one hundred eyes and gave them in the form of feathers to her favorite bird, the peacock.

As a result of this bit of mythology, the planet Jupiter has a moon named Io (it looks like the lovers ended up together after all) and any watchful, alert person is referred to as an Argus. I had never thought of it before, but Juno being the goddess of childbirth may be the motivation for the main character's name in the movie, Juno.

A self portrait of Symbolist French painter, Gustave Moreau, done around 1850. One of Moreau's students was Matisse.