It’s interesting, to me anyway, that an image of the Roman goddess Juno remains to this day on the logo of the Bank of England. There are many stories about her role as it relates to money, but what cannot be denied is that the very word itself came to us from her temple. The Latin moneta was derived from the word monere, a verb meaning to warn. Moneta was Juno’s surname.

One fable has it where the goddess’s sacred geese saved Rome from being sacked and destroyed, cackling loudly in the night so as to alert Roman soldiers of the presence of enemy troops so close at hand with widespread slaughter in their hearts. The great politician Cicero wrote that it was Juno’s commanding of a sacrifice (ut sue plena procuratio fieret) given in a temple that had alerted Romans to a forthcoming and devastating earthquake. He also chronicled in De Divinatione an earlier writing from Coelius that she had cautioned Hannibal not to carry off the golden column from her temple at Lacinium lest he lose the use of his remaining good eye (according to the earlier writing, he wisely heeded that advice).

Juno Moneta came to be regarded in this way, a representation of sound practice and advice. Because of this, coins were made in her temple, giving us the modern words money as well as mint.

Obviously, the concept of money has evolved like everything else. One modern invocation was in the form of the central bank, those with and without Juno and her warnings in their logos. It was Walter Bagehot in the nineteenth century who at the Old Lady set down the rules, so called, of central banking in an advanced mercantilist economy. Writing in Lombard Street, Bagehot argued:

Fourthly. Mr. Hankey should have observed that, as has been explained, in most panics, the principal use of a “banking reserve” is not to advance to bankers; the largest amount is almost always advanced to the mercantile public and to bill-brokers. But the point is, that by our system all extra pressure is thrown upon the Bank of England. In the worst part of the crisis of 1866, 50,000l. “fresh money” could not be borrowed, even on the best security – even on Consols – except at the Bank of England. There was no other lender to new borrowers.