Now Reifferscheid believed that he found the same conjunction of Juno and Hercules in several works of art, which may be supposed to be reflections from the same set of ideas which produced the usages just indicated. In the most important of these there is indeed no doubt about it; this is a mirror of Etruscan workmanship[581], in which three figures are marked with the Latin names IOVEI (Jupiter), IUNO and HERCELE. Jupiter sits on an altar in the middle, and with his right hand is touching Juno, who has her left hand on his shoulder; Hercules stands with his club, apparently expectant, on the left. From certain indications in the mirror (for which I must refer the reader to the illustration on p. 2259 of Roscher’s _Lexicon_) Reifferscheid concluded that Jupiter was here giving Juno in marriage to Hercules; and, in spite of some criticism, this interpretation has been generally accepted[582]. In other works of art he found the same conjunction, though no names mark the figures; in these Hercules and Juno, if such they be, appear to be contending for the mastery, rather than uniting peacefully in wedlock[583]. This conjunction, or opposition, of Juno and Hercules, is thus explained by Reifferscheid. The name Juno represents the female principle in human nature[584]; the ‘genius’ of a woman was called by this name, and the cult of Juno as a developed goddess shows many features that bear out the proposition[585]. If these facts be so, then the inference to be drawn from the conjunction or opposition of Juno and Hercules is that the name Hercules indicates the _male_ principle in human nature. But the male principle is also expressed in the word Genius, as we see e. g. in the term _lectus genialis_; Hercules therefore and Genius mean the same thing—the former name having encroached upon the domain of the latter, as a Latinized form of Heracles, of all Greek heroes or divinities the most _virile_. And if Hercules, Semo Sancus and Dius Fidius are all different names for the same idea, then the word Genius may be taken as equivalent to the two last of these as well as to Hercules[586].
But why does Reifferscheid go on to tell us that this Genius, i. e. Hercules = Sancus = Dius Fidius, is the _Genius Iovis_? How does he connect this many-titled conception with the great father of the sky? As a matter of fact, he has but slender evidence for this; he relies on the mirror in which he found Jupiter giving Juno to Hercules, and on the conjecture that the Greek Hercules, the son of Zeus, would easily come to occupy in Italy the position of Genius, if the latter were, in an abstract form and apart from individual human life, regarded as the Genius of Jupiter[587]. And in this he is followed by Wissowa and other writers in Roscher’s _Lexicon_.