an eastern monarch, did nothing to consolidate his conquest. After Wellesley encountered him at Vimiera (see Peninsular War) he was obliged to conclude the so-called convention of Cintra, and to withdraw from Portugal with all his forces. Napoleon was furious, but, as he said, was spared the necessity of sending his old friend before a court martial by the fact that the English put their own generals on their trial. Junot was sent back to Spain, where, in 1810–1811, acting under Masséna, he was once more seriously wounded. His last campaign was made in Russia, and he received more than a just share of discredit for it. Napoleon next appointed him to govern Illyria. But Junot’s mind had become deranged under the weight of his misfortunes, and on the 29th of July 1813, at Montbard, he threw himself from a window in a fit of insanity.
JUNOT, LAURE, Duchess of Abrantes (1783–1834), wife of
the preceding, was born at Montpellier. She was the daughter
of Mme. Permon, to whom during her widowhood the young
Bonaparte made an offer of marriage—such at least is the version
presented by the daughter in her celebrated Memoirs. The
Permon family, after various vicissitudes, settled at Paris, and
Bonaparte certainly frequented their house a good deal after
the downfall of the Jacobin party in Thermidor 1794. Mlle.
Permon was married to Junot early in the consulate, and at
once entered eagerly into all the gaieties of Paris, and became
noted for her beauty, her caustic wit, and her extravagance.
The first consul nicknamed her petite peste, but treated her and
Junot with the utmost generosity, a fact which did not restrain
her sarcasms and slanders in her portrayal of him in her Memoirs.
During Junot’s diplomatic mission to Lisbon, his wife displayed
her prodigality so that on his return to Paris in 1806 he was
burdened with debts, which his own intrigues did not lessen.
She joined him again at Lisbon after he had entered that city
as conqueror at the close of 1807; but even the presents and spoils
won at Lisbon did not satisfy her demands; she accompanied
Junot through part of the Peninsular War. On her return
to France she displeased the emperor by her vivacious remarks
and by receiving guests whom he disliked. The mental malady
of Junot thereafter threatened her with ruin; this perhaps
explains why she took some part in the intrigues for bringing
back the Bourbons in 1814. She did not side with Napoleon
during the Hundred Days. After 1815 she spent most of her
time at Rome amidst artistic society, which she enlivened with
her sprightly converse. She also compiled her spirited but
somewhat spiteful Memoirs, which were published at Paris in
1831–1834 in 18 volumes. Many editions have since appeared.
Of her other books the most noteworthy are Histoires contemporaines (2 vols., 1835); Scènes de la vie espagnole (2 vols., 1836); Histoire des salons de Paris (6 vols., 1837–1838); Souvenirs d’une ambassade et d’un séjour en Espagne et en Portugal, de 1808 à 1811 (2 vols., 1837). (J. Hl. R.)
JUNTA (from juntar, to join), a Spanish word meaning
(1) any meeting for a common purpose; (2) a committee; (3) an
administrative council or board. The original meaning is
now rather lost in the two derivative significations. The
Spaniards have even begun to make use of the barbarism
métin, corrupted from the English “meeting.” The word junta
has always been and still is used in the other senses. Some
of the boards by which the Spanish administration was conducted
under the Habsburg and the earlier Bourbon kings were styled
juntas. The superior governing body of the Inquisition was the
junta suprema. The provincial committees formed to organize
resistance to Napoleon’s invasion in 1808 were so called, and so
was the general committee chosen from among them to represent
the nation. In the War of Independence (1808–1814), and in all
subsequent civil wars or revolutionary disturbances in Spain or
Spanish America, the local executive bodies, elected, or in some
cases self-chosen, to appoint officers, raise money and soldiers,
look after the wounded, and discharge the functions of an
administration, have been known as juntas.
The form “Junto,” a corruption due to other Spanish words ending in -o, came into use in English in the 17th century, often in a disparaging sense, of a party united for a political purpose, a faction or cabal; it was particularly applied to the advisers of Charles I., to the Rump under Cromwell, and to the leading members of the great Whig houses who controlled the government in the reigns of William III. and Anne.
JUPITER, the chief deity of the Roman state. The great and
constantly growing influence exerted from a very early period
on Rome by the superior civilization of Greece not only caused
a modification of the Roman god on the analogy of Zeus, the
supreme deity of the Greeks, but led the Latin writers to identify
the one with the other, and to attribute to Jupiter myths and
family relations which were purely Greek and never belonged to
the real Roman religion. The Jupiter of actual worship was a
Roman god; the Jupiter of Latin literature was more than half
Greek. This identification was facilitated by the community of
character which really belonged to Jupiter and Zeus as the Roman
and Greek developments of a common original conception of
the god of the light and the heaven.
That this was the original idea of Jupiter, not only in Rome, but among all Italian peoples, admits of no doubt. The earliest form of his name was Diovis pater, or Diespiter, and his special priest was the flamen dialis; all these words point to a root div, shining, and the connexion with dies, day, is obvious (cf. Juno). One of his most ancient epithets is Lucetius, the light-bringer; and later literature has preserved the same idea in such phrases as sub Jove, under the open sky. All days of the full moon (idus) were sacred to him; all emanations from the sky were due to him and in the oldest form of religious thought were probably believed to be manifestations of the god himself. As Jupiter Elicius he was propitiated, with a peculiar ritual, to send rain in time of drought; as Jupiter Fulgur he had an altar in the Campus Martius, and all places struck by lightning were made his property and guarded from the profane by a circular wall. The vintage, which needs especially the light and heat of the sun, was under his particular care, and in the festivals connected with it (Vinalia urbana) and Meditrinalia, he was the deity invoked, and his flamen the priest employed. Throughout Italy we find him worshipped on the summits of hills, where nothing intervened between earth and heaven, and where all the phenomena of the sky could be conveniently observed. Thus on the Alban hill south of Rome was an ancient seat of his worship as Jupiter Latiaris, which was the centre of the league of thirty Latin cities of which Rome was originally an ordinary member. At Rome itself it is on the Capitoline hill that we find his oldest temple, described by Livy (i. 10); here we have a tradition of his sacred tree, the oak, common to the worship both of Zeus and Jupiter, and here too was kept the lapis silex, perhaps a celt, believed to have been a thunderbolt, which was used symbolically by the fetiales when officially declaring war and making treaties on behalf of the Roman state. Hence the curious form of oath, Jovem lapidem jurare, used both in public and private life at Rome.
In this oldest Jupiter of the Latins and Romans, the god of the light and the heaven, and the god invoked in taking the most solemn oaths, we may undoubtedly see not only the great protecting deity of the race, but one, and perhaps the only one, whose worship embodies a distinct moral conception. He is specially concerned with oaths, treaties and leagues, and it was in the presence of his priest that the most ancient and sacred form of marriage, confarreatio, took place. The lesser deities, Dius Fidius and Fides, were probably originally identical with him, and only gained a separate existence in course of time by a process familiar to students of ancient religion. This connexion with the conscience, with the sense of obligation and right dealing, was never quite lost throughout Roman history. In Virgil’s great poem, though Jupiter is in many ways as much Greek as Roman, he is still the great protecting deity who keeps the hero in the path of duty (pietas) towards gods, state and family.
But this aspect of Jupiter gained a new force and meaning at the close of the monarchy with the building of the famous temple on the Capitol, of which the foundations are still to be seen. It was dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, i.e. the best and greatest of all the Jupiters, and with him were associated
