HOMEHera, Queen of the Gods and Goddess of Marriage
Roman Name: Juno
Pronunciation: hair-a
Hera, the queen of Olympus, was the goddess of marriage. There was just one problem with her. Zeus, her husband, had many other wives, and she was jealous of them. She was so jealous that once, that when she spied a small black thundercloud in the otherwise blue sky and immediately guessed that Zeus was inside the cloud with one of his other wives. She darted into the cloud expecting to see Zeus and his newest wife, but instead, she found Zeus sitting with a snow-white cow! He had tricked her by turning his newest wife, Io, into a cow to protect her from Hera’s wrath when he saw her coming.
Unfortunately, Hera wasn’t fooled. She pretended to suspect nothing, but begged Zeus to let her keep the little white cow. Zeus, who didn’t know that Hera had guessed who the cow was, granted her request. He didn’t want to arouse Hera’s suspicions.
Hera took the cow and tied it to a tree and sent her servant, Argus, to watch over it. Argus had 100 eyes placed all over his body, and he only closed half of them in sleep. Io looked up to the heavens for Zeus’s help, but he was too afraid of Hera to help her. Finally, he sent Hermes to go to Earth and set Io free.
Hermes disguised himself as a shepherd and walked toward Argus playing a tune on his shepherd’s pipe. Argus was glad for the company and listened, tired. Then Hermes began to tell a long, boring, story with no end, and 50 of Argus’ eyes closed in sleep. Slowly, the other 50 eyes followed suit, and Hermes quickly touched all of the eyes with his wand to close them forever in eternal sleep.
Hermes untied the cow, and Io ran to the home of her father. He didn’t recognize the cow as his daughter until Io scratched her name in the dirt. Her father knew immediately what had happened. He ran to Olympus in a rage looking for Zeus. In self-defense, Zeus struck him down with a lightning bolt.
Meanwhile, Hera discovered her servant was dead and Io had been freed. She grew angry and sent a gadfly to sting and chase the cow-girl. To escape the gadfly, Io fled all the way to Egypt. When she entered Egypt, the Egyptians began to worship her and turned her into a goddess because she was such a beautiful snow-white cow.
Hera finally decided to allow Zeus to turn Io back into a human on the condition that he promised never to look at her again. Io then lived the rest of her life as an Egyptian goddess.