In Greek mythology, Hera was the wife of Zeus, the greatest of the gods on Mount Olympus. She was the queen of the gods, the symbol for women and marriage. Her name may have roots in either fertility or heroism. She was vengeful due to Zeus' regular infidelity. She appears in many Greek myths and tales. In Roman mythology, the story is the same but her name is Juno. The goddess Juno gives her name to the month of June, the traditional season for mating and marriage.
The goddess of love is Venus in Roman mythology and Aphrodite in Greek mythology. They are key figures in myths and celebrations of love, beauty and fertility. The merging of the Greek Aphrodite myths in to Roman lore makes it difficult for scholars to trace the original goddess of love in ancient Roman rituals. The word "venus" means sexual desire in Latin and may have been the spiritual root of the name attributed to the goddess.
Artemis is the Greek goddess of the hunt, wild animals, the wilderness, virginity and childbirth. She is an important goddess in Greek myths and may have predated the civilization in that she represented survival in the wild. In Roman mythology, her name is Diana and her importance is equal. Artemis and Diana both have a twin named Apollo in both Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo is an equally important god of art, literature and music, the opposite of the wild.
Athena was the virgin goddess of poetry, magic, scholarly wisdom, commerce and medicine. She also invented music. The city of Athens in Greece is named for her. In the Parthenon, her temple was the largest and most sacred. She was imported to Roman mythology later than other goddesses, in the second century BC, as Minerva.
The goddess of domesticity and family in Greek mythology is Hestia. Her counterpart in Rome is Vesta. The concept of the hearth is based on the fire lit to her in the household where the first sacrifice made to any god was to her. Her public statue was always the first to be put up in a new colony.