Hera, the goddess of marriage and birth

vickaboleyn (65)Verified✔️ / Delegator 🏅in Writing & Reviews • 3 years ago

Author's note: The following article was originally published in Spanish language on my Blurt blog in April 20th, 2021.

Banner made with Canva

In the last post, we explained about Zeus, the king of the gods whose offspring is so wide that it surprises a lot of people who is devoted to read and analyze classical mythology. We have approached his cult in Greece and Rome, places where he was considered the patron of light, the countryside and life, as well as the protector of justice. We have even seen, briefly, some of his most known stories, in which his love relationships with various divine and mortal women (including his own relatives) were highlighted.

Those lovers, including women to whom he forced himself into, faced the merciless fury of Hera, the wife of Zeus and an important divinity within the Greek pantheon whose attributes we'll explore right now in this article.

Who was Hera among the Greco-latin gods?

Among the Greeks and Romans, Hera / Juno is the protector goddess of marriage, childbirth, fidelity and motherhood, as well as the creator of the lunar cycles and the ultimate protector of Rome (Masiá Veriscat, 2010). Ángel María Garibay (2020) points out that, as the wife of Zeus and protector of women, she is a mother goddess and the cosmic complement of heaven.

There are many conflicting accounts about her offspring. Hesiod (2007, 10) points to Ares (Mars), god of war; Hebe (Juventus), goddess of youth and helper of the gods, and Ilithia, the goddess of birth and midwives, as her children. Gordon Cheers (2019), on the other hand, points out that she was only the mother of Ares and Hephaestus (Vulcan), god of fire and blacksmithing.

Hierogamy as the object of protection

In Greco-Roman mythology, Hera has always been represented as a vengeful and jealous goddess who constantly attacks every mortal who dares to "seduce" Zeus, along with the descendants who were born from their union with him. For José Carlos Bermejo Barrera (1989), Hera's actions would be interpreted as the protection of the marital interests of women in marriage, since Zeus and Hera were a hiéros gámos, a sacred marriage, the model to be followed by all Greeks.

However, this protection of the marital interests shows a complete imbalance of power between both divinities; in words of Ana Lorena Nieto Nanini (2019), the formal union with Zeus gave Hera the status of queen of the gods, but not the same marital rights. Thereby, Hera could not afford a single lover, even though there were mortals, such as king Ixion, who were willing to be her lovers.

Cult in Greece

According to Robin Hard (2009), the cult of Hera spread throughout Greece, mainly in the regions of Samos (her birthplace, according to Greek mythology), Heraion, Arcadia, Argos, the Peloponnese and the islands of the Aegean. She was invoked especially at weddings and childbirth, as well as in fertility rites such as the Daedala and the Tonaias.

In Arcadia, she was invoked with the following invocations:

Teléia, that is, the one who comes to term, the one who becomes a woman.
Zigia, or the one who joins in marriage.
Gamósteles, the one who prepares the wedding.
Gamélia, the one who presides over the marriage.

Also she was invoked with invocations related to the different stages of women's life:

Pais, the child, the young girl.
Parthénos, the maiden, the unmarried woman.
Nimphe, the bride and wife.

An interesting aspect of their worship is undoubtedly the celebration of the Daedala. The rituals that are carried out have their origin in a myth about the separation and reconciliation between the divine spouses. According to the geographer and mythographer Pausanias (in Nieto Nanini, 2019: 202), Hera had become angry with Zeus for his constant infidelities to the point that she decided to retire to Euboea, one of the Aegean islands. The king of the gods, in his eagerness to recover her, turned to Cithaeron, god of the homonymous mountain, for advice on how to calm her down. The divinity told him that he should create a wooden doll; later, he must announce that he was going to marry the daughter of a king. After learning of the supposed wedding, Hera went to prevent it. Realizing that his "fiancée" was a wooden doll and that Zeus still loved her, she made peace with him.

In commemoration of the events in the story, the inhabitants of the Boeotian region went to the forest to hang up pieces of fresh meat; throughout the day, they waited for a crow to perch on one of those trees, as these birds were considered to be in charge of pointing out to the Boeotians which trunk they should use to create the daidale and reproduce Zeus's "joke". The central objective of the representation of this hierogamy was probably linked to agricultural fertility, taking into account that Zeus and Hera represented life (Bermejo Barrera, 1989: 14 and 15).

Cult in Rome

In Rome, the cult of Hera, the Roman Juno, had retained its same attributes. The only thing that had changed were the celebrations, which were more devoted to the figure of the mother than to the protection of marriage. An example of this are the Matronalia, which were celebrated in March. According to Concepción Masiá Veriscat (2017), these celebrations were carried out by married women who were about to become mothers or who already had children, due to the importance of the figure of the mother in terms of protection and the education of children.

In this case, the Matronalia can be considered as the earliest antecedent of the current celebration of Mother's Day, because mothers received gifts from their children and husbands; the latter even raised prayers to the goddess for their health and well-being. The celebrated women, meanwhile, cooked for the whole family, including slaves, who were given the day off.

On the possible origins of this festival, Saray García (2012) points out a possible link with the construction of the temple in honor of the goddess on the Esquiline Hill in 268 BC, as well as the peace pact between the Romans and the Sabines after the event of the abduction of the latter's women.

Little-known myths

Although most of the myths in which Hera / Juno appears are linked to the king of the gods, it is pertinent to mention some of the stories where the goddess was the central axis of the story, although they are not fully known:

Brith and upbringing in the Island of Samos. According to Nieto Nanini (2019), some versions of the myths about Hera indicate that the goddess was not eaten by Cronos, but was born and raised on the island. Her adoptive father was Temenus, son of Pelasgus, the first king of the Arcadians. Temenus dedicated three temples to her, all of them linked to the stages of women's lives: the first one when she was a child, the second one when she married Zeus and the third one when she separated from him.
Ixion's punishment. Cheers (2019) mentions that Ixion, king of Thessaly, had murdered his father-in-law Deioneus, since he had retained his mares in reaction to his failure to pay the corresponding dowry when he asked for the hand of Dia, his daughter. Zeus, sympathetic to Ixion when he found himself alone and without allies, purified him and invited him to a banquet held on Olympus. It was during the event that he tried to seduce Hera without success; as punishment, Zeus killed him with his thunderbolt. In Tartarus, Hermes tied him to a wheel with snakes and condemned him to spin it without rest.
Callisto and Arcas. Callisto, a huntress belonging to the courtship of the goddess Artemis, had been seduced by Zeus. When she became pregnant with him, she tried to hide her pregnancy by all means; however, she was exiled by the goddess after discovering her pregnancy. Hera, finding out who the child's father was, turned her into a bear. Her son Arcas was about to kill her, but Zeus stopped him, transforming mother and son into the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, respectively. That act enraged Hera, who pleaded with the Titans Ocean and Tethis to prevent Callisto from disappearing completely from the sky (Cheers, 2019: 36 and 37).
The rebellion against Zeus. There are several versions of this particular myth; one of them, collected by Cheers (2019), explains that Hera, fed up with Zeus's infidelities and his irresponsibility in the affairs of Olympus, gathered other gods and rebelled against him. Zeus was tied to the bed while he slept, so that he could not untie himself. However, the titan Thetis released him; Zeus, furious against the rebels, imposed on Hera an exemplary punishment: he tied her wrists to one of the rafters of the highest ceiling of Olympus and tied her feet with anvils.

Consulted sources (in Spanish)

Bermejo Barrera, José Carlos. 1989. "Zeus, Hera y el matrimonio sagrado", en: Polis, Revista de ideas y formas políticas de la Antigüedad, núm. 1. Pp. 7 - 24. Obtenido de: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=148763
Cheers, Gordon (Editor). 2019. Mitología. España. RBA Editorial. English version: Mythology: Myths, legends and fantasies.
García, Saray. 2012. "Las Matronalia, fiestas romanas", en: Historia General. Consultado el 20 de abril de 2021.
Garibay K., Ángel María. 2020. Mitología griega. México. Editorial Porrúa. Colección "Sepan cuántos...", núm. 31.
Hard, Robin. 2009. El gran libro de la mitología griega. España. Editorial La Esfera de los Libros S.L. English version: The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology.
Hesíodo. 2007. Teogonía. España. Luarna Editorial. Consultado en: Biblioteca electrónica del Municipio de Ataun, País Vasco. English version: Sacred texts.
Masiá Veriscat, Concepción. 2017. Mitología romana. España. Albor Libros.
Nieto Nanini, Ana Lorena. 2019. "Reivindicación de Hera: Hierogamia y sus consecuencias", en: Revista de Estudios Clásicos. Núm. 47. Pp. 191 - 207. Obtenido de: http://revistas.uncuyo.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/revistaestudiosclasicos/article/view/2632