Maia- Roman GodDeity
Domains
Description
On the first of May, the Flamen Volcanalis sacrificed to Maia. The month itself carried her name. She was an old Italian goddess of growth and warmth, and through her the earth came alive after winter.
Mythology & Lore
The Kalends of May
Maia was old. Macrobius and Varro both counted her among Rome's earliest goddesses, a deity of growth and warmth whose name the Romans gave to May. On the Kalends of May, the Flamen Volcanalis, the priest of Vulcan, made a sacrifice in her honor. The pairing was deliberate: Vulcan's fire from below and Maia's warmth above, the two forces that brought the fields to life each spring.
Ovid weighed the competing explanations in the Fasti. Some said May was named for the maiores, the elders. Ovid sided with the goddess. The month when the earth flourished belonged to Maia.
Mercury's Mother
Romans identified her with the Greek Maia, eldest of the seven Pleiades and daughter of Atlas. In that tradition, Jupiter came to her secretly in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, and she bore Mercury there. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes tells the Greek version: the child was born at dawn and by noon had invented the lyre from a tortoise shell.
The Italian Maia had no such story. She was a goddess of the season, not a character in a narrative. When the Greek tale attached itself to her name, she gained a famous son but lost her independence. The Kalends sacrifice continued regardless. The priests remembered the older goddess even after the poets preferred the newer one.
Relationships
- Equivalent to