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Thus the oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the
sacred oak grove. So at Dodona the oak-god Zeus was coupled with
Dione, whose very name is only a dialectically different form of
Juno; and so on the top of Mount Cithaeron, as we have seen, he
appears to have been periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera.
It is probable, though it cannot be positively proved, that the
sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno was annually celebrated by all
the peoples of the Latin stock in the month which they named after
the goddess, the midsummer month of June.
If at any time of the year the Romans celebrated the sacred marriage
of Jupiter and Juno, as the Greeks commonly celebrated the
corresponding marriage of Zeus and Hera, we may suppose that under
the Republic the ceremony was either performed over images of the
divine pair or acted by the Flamen Dialis and his wife the
Flaminica. For the Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove; indeed,
ancient and modern writers have regarded him, with much probability,
as a living image of Jupiter, a human embodiment of the sky-god.


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