Hera
Queen of the Gods
HAIR-uh
Goddess of marriage and queen of Olympus, the god most wronged by her husband, and the one who least forgets it.
The Story
Hera presides over marriage and legitimate rule, which makes her position genuinely impossible: the institution she guards is violated constantly by the god she is married to. Her mythology is the working out of that contradiction.
She is rarely the aggressor against Zeus directly. Her anger lands instead on his lovers and their children, Leto hounded across the earth, Heracles set impossible labours, Semele tricked into asking to see her lover unveiled. Read straight, she is vindictive; read at all closely, she is the only Olympian holding anyone to the terms.
Did You Know?
- The Heraion on Samos was among the first monumental temples in Greece, built to her before anyone had built anything on that scale to Zeus.
- The eyes in a peacock's tail are hers. When her hundred-eyed watchman Argus was killed, she moved the eyes onto the bird.
- June is named for her Roman counterpart Juno, which is why it has been the marriage month for two thousand years.