Myth · Greek

Hera

Greek mythology — Olympian, queen of the gods

Hera is queen of the Olympians, goddess of marriage and of women's lives, and both sister and wife of Zeus. Hers was among the oldest and richest cults in Greece, centred on Argos and Samos, and her temple at Olympia is the oldest on that site. In literature she is defined by her fury at her husband's infidelities, which falls less on him than on his lovers and their children — above all on Heracles, whose name paradoxically means "glory of Hera".

How to spot them

▸Peacock, cuckoo, cow and pomegranate; the polos crown or diadem and the sceptre
▸Homer's standing epithets 'ox-eyed' (boopis) and 'white-armed'; Argive and Samian in cult
▸Goddess of marriage; mother of Ares, Hebe and Eileithyia
▸The implacable divine enemy of Troy after losing a beauty contest on Mount Ida

Stories & episodes

Set a hundred-eyed giant to guard a girl her husband had turned into a white heifer

Io was watched by Argus Panoptes until Hermes lulled him asleep and killed him; the eyes went into the peacock's tail.

Sent two serpents into an infant hero's cradle, and he strangled them

The baby Heracles, whose whole career of labours she engineered.

Kept the goddess of childbirth away from Delos to prolong a rival's labour

Leto laboured nine days and nights before Apollo and Artemis were born.

Condemned a chattering nymph to repeat only the last words she heard

Echo had held her in conversation while Zeus slipped away.

Offered Paris lordship over all Asia, and still lost the golden apple

Her defeat by Aphrodite made her Troy's bitterest divine enemy.

Blinded the seer Tiresias for his verdict on who enjoys love more

He said women, nine times over; Zeus compensated him with prophecy.

Tricked into suckling an infant hero, she spilled the Milky Way

A late tale explaining the galaxy's name, from Greek gala, milk.

Quick-fire facts

•Roman equivalent: Juno, whose month Iunius gives English June, traditionally the lucky month to marry
•Daughter of Cronus and Rhea; swallowed by her father and disgorged with her siblings
•Mother by Zeus of Ares, Hebe and Eileithyia; in Hesiod she bears Hephaestus alone, without a father
•Her chief sanctuaries were the Heraion of Argos and the Heraion of Samos; the Temple of Hera at Olympia (c. 590 BC) is the oldest peripteral temple there
•The Olympic flame is still kindled at her temple at Olympia
•In the Iliad she and Athena work relentlessly for the Greeks; in Book 14 she seduces Zeus to distract him from the battlefield
•In Virgil's Aeneid the same hatred, transferred to Juno, drives the storm that wrecks Aeneas on the Libyan coast
•The temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline housed the Roman mint, giving English both 'money' and 'mint'
•The sacred marriage or hieros gamos of Zeus and Hera was re-enacted in her festivals
•Asteroid 3 Juno and NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter are named for her Roman counterpart

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources

Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Hera
Homer — Iliad Her partisanship for the Greeks and the deception of Zeus in Book 14