{
  "id": "luna",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Luna",
  "summary": "The Roman moon-goddess, the Sun's sister who drives her own team. Ovid names her in one breath with Diana and Trivia as \"the goddess of the triple form\"; Medea invokes her and boasts of drawing her down from the sky; Virgil's Nisus prays to the moon as Latona's child; her bloodied chariot is among the omens of Caesar's death. Counterpart of the Greek Selene.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "roman",
    "deities",
    "moon",
    "diana",
    "magic"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "equivalent_of",
      "target": "selene"
    },
    {
      "rel": "sibling_of",
      "target": "sol"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "diana"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hecate"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "metamorphoses"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "aeneid"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Luna in Roman mythology?",
    "Is Luna the same as Diana?",
    "Is Luna the same as Selene?",
    "Who is the brother of Luna?",
    "What does it mean to draw down the moon?",
    "Why does Nisus pray to the moon in the Aeneid?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Ovid treats Luna, Diana and Trivia as one goddess: Jason swears to Medea \"by the goddess of the triple form, Diana, Trivia, or Luna called, and by her sacred groves and fanes\" (Met. 7.1).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The Moon has her own chariot and is the Sun's sister: as Phaethon loses control, \"Phoebe is wondering that her brother's steeds run lower than her own, and sees the smoke of scorching clouds\" (Met. 2.193).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Medea's night invocation names her among the powers of witchcraft — \"O softly-moving Moon — genial, your fire succeeds the heated day!\" beside Night, the Stars and \"three-faced\" Hecate — and she boasts \"From your appointed ways, O wonder-working Moon, I draw you down against the magic-making sound of gongs and brazen vessels\" (Met. 7.159).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Virgil's Nisus, spear raised, \"looked to the still moon, in heaven, and thus implored: 'O goddess … O glory of the stars, Latona's child! O guardian of groves'\" (Aen. 9.367) — the moon addressed as Diana, with the hunter's vows.",
      "sources": [
        "virgil-aeneid"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.92
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Among the portents before Caesar's murder Ovid lists that \"The chariot of the moon was sprinkled with red blood\", beside blue Lucifer and the Stygian owl (Met. 15.745).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "For Livy the moon is a measure, not a person: Numa \"divided the year into twelve months, corresponding to the moon's revolutions\" and added intercalary months to match the sun (Livy 1.19.6).",
      "sources": [
        "livy-ab-urbe-condita-1"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "\"Luna = Diana = Trivia\" is Ovid's own formula (Met. 7.1), which is why Luna rarely appears as a separate character in Latin epic.",
    "Where she is a person she is the Sun's sister with a chariot (Met. 2.193) or the witch's moon Medea pulls down (Met. 7.159).",
    "Luna = Selene by function; Hesiod likewise makes Selene the sister of Helius and Eos, children of Theia and Hyperion (Theog. 371)."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "Is Luna the same as Diana?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who is the brother of Luna?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "What does it mean to draw down the moon?",
      "claim": "c3"
    },
    {
      "q": "Why does Nisus pray to the moon in the Aeneid?",
      "claim": "c4"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Binds the Luna–Diana–Trivia identification to the sentence in Ovid that makes it, and separates the astronomical moon of Livy from the goddess of the poets.",
  "confidence": 0.92,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "roman",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "other",
      "domains": [
        "the moon",
        "night",
        "months",
        "witchcraft"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "crescent horns",
        "chariot"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q1235172"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/luna",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/luna.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Luna",
    "description": "The Roman moon-goddess, the Sun's sister who drives her own team. Ovid names her in one breath with Diana and Trivia as \"the goddess of the triple form\"; Medea invokes her and boasts of drawing her down from the sky; Virgil's Nisus prays to the moon as Latona's child; her bloodied chariot is among the omens of Caesar's death. Counterpart of the Greek Selene.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/luna",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Ovid, Metamorphoses — tr. Brookes More (1922), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0959/phi006/phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng3.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Virgil, Aeneid — tr. Theodore C. Williams (1910), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0690/phi003/phi0690.phi003.perseus-eng2.xml"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Books 1–10 — tr. Rev. Canon Roberts (1912), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0914/phi001/phi0914.phi001.perseus-eng3.xml"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Luna"
  }
}