Minerva was the Roman name of Greek goddess Athena. She was considered to be the virgin goddess of warriors, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, crafts, and the inventor of music.1
This article focuses on Minerva in early Rome and in cultic practice. For information on literary mythological accounts of Minerva, which were heavily influenced by Greek mythology, see Pallas Athena where she is one of three virgin goddesses along with Artemis and Hestia.
Etruscan Menrva
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The name "Minerva" is likely imported from the Etruscans who called her Menrva. In Etruscan mythology, Menrva was the goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools and commerce. She was the Etruscan counterpart to Greek Athena and to Roman Minerva. Like Athena, Menrva was born from the head of her father, Tinia.
Her name has the "mn-" stem, linked with memory. See Greek "Mnemosyne" (gr. μνημοσύνη) and "mnestis" (gr. μνῆστις): memory, remembrance, recollection. The Romans could have confused her foreign name with their word mens meaning "mind" since one of her aspects as goddess pertained not only to war but also to the intellectual. Minerva is the Roman name for Athena the goddess of Wisdom and Virginity. She is also depicted as an owl.
Cult of Minerva in Rome
Menrva was part of a holy triad with Tinia and Uni, equivalent to the Roman Jupiter-Juno-Minerva triad. Minerva was the daughter of Jupiter
As Minerva Medica, she was the goddess of medicine and doctors. As Minerva Achaea, she was worshipped at Luceria in Apulia where votive gifts and arms said to be those of Diomedes were preserved in her temple.23
Ovid called her the "goddess of a thousand works." Minerva was worshipped throughout Italy, though only in Rome did she take on a warlike character. Her worship was also taken out to the empire — in Britain, for example, she was conflated with the wisdom goddess Sulis.
The Romans celebrated her festival from March 19 to March 23 during the day which is called, in the feminine plural, Quinquatria, the fifth after the Ides of March, the nineteenth, the artisans' holiday. A lesser version, the Minusculae Quinquatria, was held on the Ides of June, June 13, by the flute-players, who were particularly useful to religion. In 207 BC, a guild of poets and actors was formed to meet and make votive offerings at the temple of Minerva on the Aventine hill. Among others, its members included Livius Andronicus. The Aventine sanctuary of Minerva continued to be an important center of the arts for much of the middle Roman Republic.
Minerva was worshipped on the Capitoline Hill as one of the Capitoline Triad along with Jupiter and Juno, at the Temple of Minerva Medica, and at the "Delubrum Minervae" a temple founded around 50 BC by Pompey on the site of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (near the present-day Piazza della Minerva and the Pantheon).
Minerva in modern usage
This section describes how the goddess or her image is represented in modern times.
For other usages of the name "Minerva" see
Minerva (disambiguation).
Universities and educational establishments
As patron goddess of wisdom, Minerva frequently features in statuary, an image on seals, and in other forms, at educational establishments, including:
- Minerva is the symbol of the University of Porto.
- A statue of Minerva is located in the center of La Sapienza University, the most important university of Rome.
- Minerva is displayed in front of Columbia University's Low Memorial Library as "Alma Mater."
- Minerva is the name of a language school in Ruse, Bulgaria.
- Minerva is the name of a female residence at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
- Minerva is the name of the registration and student records software at McGill University
- Minerva is the name of a computer science server used by students at the Harvard Extension School.
- Minerva is displayed to the East of University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Elliot University Center as a statue.
- The SUNY Potsdam campus in Potsdam, NY is home to multiple statues of Minerva and a cafe named after her.
- Minerva is featured on the seals and logos of many institutions of higher learning:
- University of Lincoln. Minerva's head is used as the logo of this UK University. There is a tradition within the Lincoln rugby union team and it is thought they are the Knights of Minerva, each match being won in her honour.
- University at Albany, The State University of New York. Minerva is still venerated by seniors and their 'torch bearers' during a pre-graduation ritual called "Torch Night" there.
- the University of Alabama
- Union College, New York. Union College has also used Minerva as the name of their new academic and social "Third Space" program, the Minerva House System; and, also here, Minerva is the goddess of Theta Delta Chi.
- UFRJ, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.
- Escola Politécnica of USP, Polytechnical School of University of São Paulo, in Brazil.
- Ghent University, in Belgium
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences, in Cambridge, Mass. The seal's principal figure is Minerva - a symbol appropriate for an organization created in the midst of the American Revolution and dedicated to the cultivation of every art and science to "advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people."
- Minerva is also the name of the oldest student-association in the Netherlands (Leiden University).
- Minerva decorates the keystone over the main entrance to the Boston Public Library beneath the words, "Free to all." BPL was the original public-financed library in America and, with all other libraries, is the long-term memory of the human race.
- Minerva is the Goddess of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Fraternity Brothers are known as Loyal Sons of Minerva.
- Minerva is the patron of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the largest organization of Black women in the world.
- Minerva is the name of a remote learning facility at Bath Spa University in England, UK.
- Minerva is featured on the seal of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
- Minerva is displayed as a statue in the entrance to Main Building at Wells College in Aurora, NY.
- Minerva is the patroness of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
- Minerva is the name of the statue on the campus of Texas Woman's University that represents the school mascot, The Pioneer Woman
- Minerva is featured in the logo of The Mac.Robertson Girls' High School, Australia.
- Minerva is featured on the seal of Union College in Schenectady, NY. Union's motto is (translated from the French) "Under the laws of Minerva, we are all brothers." Union College also has seven "Minerva Houses," to which all students and faculty (and some staff) belong. The Houses create intellectual, cultural and social programs for their members and the college community.
- Minerva is the patroness of the Union Philosophical Society of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
- Minerva is featured on the seal of The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.
Societies
The Great Seal of California
- The Seal of California depicts the Goddess Minerva having sprung full grown from the brain of Jupiter. This was interpreted as analogous to the political birth of the State of California without having gone through the probation period of being a Territory.
- In the early 20th century, Manuel José Estrada Cabrera, President of Guatemala, tried to promote a "Cult of Minerva" in his country; this left little legacy other than a few interesting Hellenic style "Temples" in parks around Guatemala.
- According to John Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798), the third degree of the Bavarian Illuminati was called Minerval or Brother of Minerva, in honor of the goddess of learning. Later, this title was adopted for the first initiation of Aleister Crowley's OTO rituals.
- Minerva is the logo of the world famous German "Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science" (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft)
- Minerva holds some sort of ritualistic significance for Sigma Alpha Epsilon, a national social fraternity (link)
- The helmet of Minerva serves as the crest of the distinctive unit insignia for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Public monuments and places
- Minerva circle is one of the famous and busiest circles in Bangalore
- The Minerva Roundabout in Guadalajara, Mexico, located at the crossing of the López Mateos, Vallarta, López Cotilla, Agustín Yáñez and Golfo de Cortez avenues, features the goddess standing on a pedestal, surrounded by a large fountain, with an inscription which says "Justice, wisdom and strength guard this loyal city".
- Minerva is displayed as a statue in the Minneapolis Central Library in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- Minerva is displayed as a statue in Pavia near the train station, and is considered as an important landmark in the city.
- A statue of Minerva stands atop the dome of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, Scotland.
- A seven foot statue of Minerva stands at the highest point in Brooklyn, overlooking New York Harbor, located in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Medal
- Minerva is displayed on the Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government.
See also
Footnotes and references
- ^ Candau, Francisco J. Cevallos (1994). Coded Encounters: Writing, Gender, and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, University of Massachusetts Press. pp.215. ISBN 0870238868, http://books.google.com/books?isbn=0870238868.
- ^ Aristot. Mirab. Narrat. 117
- ^ Schmitz, Leonhard (1867), "Achaea (2)", in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1, Boston, pp. 8
Secondary sources
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870). See page 1090
