Hera赫拉

Origins

Daughter of Cronus and Rhea — Zeus's sister, and his wife. Zeus is said to have come to her as a cuckoo drenched by a storm; she warmed the bird against her breast, and only then did he show himself and court her. At their wedding, Gaia gave a tree that bore golden apples.

Sacred symbols

PeacockCrownPomegranateCow

Myths

Argus and the peacock

When Zeus turned his lover Io into a white cow, Hera set hundred-eyed Argus to guard her day and night. After Hermes killed the giant, Hera set his hundred eyes in the peacock's tail.

"The glory of Hera"

The name Heracles means "glory of Hera," yet she was his lifelong enemy: she sent snakes to his cradle, and later the madness in which he killed his wife and children — the crime his twelve labours atoned for. Once he became a god they were reconciled, and she gave him her daughter Hebe in marriage.

Binding Zeus

With Poseidon and Athena she once tied Zeus up as he slept, hoping to seize power. The sea-nymph Thetis summoned a Hundred-Hander to free him, and the coup collapsed.

Relationships with the other gods

• DesireZeus

  Heaven's first couple

  Brother and sister, husband and wife. He won her pity as a rain-soaked cuckoo and was unfaithful ever after. Unable to touch her husband, Hera turned her anger on his lovers and their children, and once joined the other gods in tying him up. They have quarrelled for thousands of years and never actually parted.

• FeudHephaestus

  The son thrown from the mountain

  Disgusted that her newborn was lame, Hera threw him from Olympus. Years later a golden throne arrived as a gift; she sat down and could not move. Only when he was brought back drunk was the quarrel mended — and part of the price, they say, was Aphrodite's hand in marriage.

• KinAres

  Mother and war-god

  Ares was her legitimate son by Zeus. But in the Trojan War she backed the Greeks and he fought for Troy. So she asked Zeus: "Will you be angry if I have Ares beaten off the field?" — and sent Athena to do it.

• FeudDionysus

  Hunting the bastard son

  First she tricked Semele to her death; then she drove mad the family of Ino, who took the baby in; and when Dionysus was grown she sent madness on him too, so that he wandered Egypt and Syria until the Great Mother cured him.

• FeudApollo

  The child forbidden to be born

  Hera forbade any land to shelter pregnant Leto, kept the goddess of childbirth away so that her labour lasted nine days and nights, and set the serpent Python on her trail. Apollo's first great deed was to shoot Python and avenge his mother.

• FeudArtemis

  A slap on the battlefield

  When the gods came to blows beneath Troy, Artemis taunted her. Hera caught both her wrists in one hand, took her bow with the other and boxed her ears with it. Arrows scattered everywhere, and the huntress ran weeping to her father's knee.

• RivalryAphrodite

  The apple and the magic girdle

  Paris gave the golden apple to Aphrodite, and Hera held the grudge for the whole Trojan War. Yet she could swallow her pride when she needed something: to draw Zeus's attention from the battle she borrowed Aphrodite's irresistible girdle, and lulled her husband to sleep.

• AllianceAthena

  The league of the passed-over

  The two goddesses Paris did not choose became Troy's most determined enemies, driving their chariot down from Olympus side by side. Their earlier joint venture, with Poseidon, was tying up Zeus.