Hera (Juno)

Hera, or Juno in the Latin world, was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. She was swallowed by her father along with Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, and Demeter and liberated by her brother Zeus, who also became her husband. There are various legends dealing with this union, the most common of which speaks of a secret marriage that took place on Mount Ida in Troas or Mount Cithaeron in Boeotia. The inhabitants of Samos claimed that the marriage was consummated on their island and lasted for three hundred years before it was made public. Another version speaks instead of a magnificent ceremony held in the palace of Oceanus at the westernmost edge of the earth, attended by all the gods who brought gifts: Gaea offered to Hera the golden apples kept in the garden of the Hesperides. Some say that it was Hera who seduced her younger brother, having chosen him at the moment of his birth; others that Zeus possessed the evasive Hera when, during a storm, she held him in her lap in the form of a frightened cuckoo.

Hera fought at Zeus' side against the Titans and then against the Giants, causing the death of Porphyrion who was seized by a violent passion for her. This later happened to Ixion as well, but he met an even worse fate. When Zeus had established his sovereignty, Hera sat by his side at the councils and banquets of the gods. Rather than queen of the immortals, Hera was considered the consort of the king of the gods and men, to whom she owed unquestioning obedience like all the other Olympians. She was a faithful and sensible wife, though jealous and petulant. From their union were born Ares, Ilithia, and Hebe. As for her fourth son, Hephaestus, there is also the myth that Hera conceived him on her own without her husband's involvement to repay him for having given birth to Athena from his own head instead of from a woman's womb. In fact, Hera was considered the protectress of brides and birth.

Hera's relationship with her husband was not always straightforward. Zeus listened to her advice and made his own secret thoughts known to her, but Hera sometimes behaved toward him like an independent deity and did not hesitate to oppose him and to act against his will. In such cases Zeus sometimes reacted with a heavy hand. Once he even suspended her among the clouds, with her hands bound and two anvils tied to her feet. On that occasion, Hephaestus' defense of his mother aroused the anger of his father, who cast him down from Olympus. Prompted by her fierce ambition, Hera even organized, with Apollo and Poseidon, a mutiny against Zeus, in which all the gods of Olympus took part with the exception of Hestia. The master of the gods was tied to his bed with leather thongs, knotted a hundred times, but the rebellion was brought to an end by Thetis who, fearing a civil war over the succession, sent Briareus to free him.

Hera's jealous, violent, and vindictive character resulted in some memorable clashes with her husband, whom she was unable to forgive for his numerous infidelities, which she took as personal insults. Her hatred was directed not just toward her husband's lovers (willing or not), as Semele discovered too late, but also at those who gave them succor, such as Echo, and even the children born from those liaisons. The most famous of these was Heracles whose mother, Alcmene, had the misfortune of attracting Zeus. Numerous other legends in which Hera played a leading or secondary role portrayed her along the same lines: she was responsible for the tragic fate of Io, drove Athamas and Ino out of their minds, incited Artemis against Callisto, and so on.

The rages and revenges of Hera were also prompted by more petty motives, as was discovered by the soothsayer Tiresias who contradicted her, or by the Trojans who earned her undying enmity as a result of the preference that Paris had given to the beauty of Aphrodite. Zeus, who was afraid of her, was obliged to deal with her anger and, when he could, correct her excesses.

Last Edited On: 08/13/99

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