Hera is the queen of the gods, sister and wife of Zeus. She protects marriage, fidelity, brides and women in childbirth. To the Romans she was Juno, who gave her name to the month of June.
Who she is
A daughter of Cronus and Rhea, she was swallowed by her father and freed by Zeus. In myth, Zeus won her by turning into a shivering cuckoo that she held to her breast. Their wedding was a great celebration, and Gaia gave the couple the tree of golden apples, kept in the garden of the Hesperides. With Zeus she had Ares, Hebe, cupbearer of the gods, Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, and, in some sources on her own, Hephaestus.
Hera's jealousy
Hera's best-known trait in myth is her jealousy of Zeus's lovers and their children.
- Io: to hide her, Zeus turned the girl into a heifer. Hera asked for it as a gift and set Argus, a giant with a hundred eyes that never all slept at once, to guard her. Hermes, on Zeus's orders, lulled him to sleep and killed him; Hera placed Argus's hundred eyes on the tail of the peacock, her sacred bird.
- Leto: Hera prevented her from finding anywhere to give birth until the island of Delos welcomed the birth of Apollo and Artemis.
- Heracles: his name means "glory of Hera", yet the goddess persecuted him all his life, sending two snakes to his cradle and later madness; see Heracles.
- Semele: Hera persuaded Dionysus's mother to ask Zeus to appear in all his glory, and the woman was burned to ashes.
Her cult
Hera was worshipped throughout Greece, but her largest sanctuaries were the Heraion of Samos, on the island where tradition says she was born, now a UNESCO site, and the Heraion of Argos, in the Peloponnese. At Olympia the temple of Hera is one of the oldest in the sanctuary, and it is there that the Olympic flame is still lit today. See Samos.
See also the twelve Olympians.