Hera is one of the Twelve Olympians and the sister and wife of Zeus. She is the daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea and rules over Mount Olympus. A matronly figure, Hera served as both the patroness and protectress of married women. One of Hera’s defining characteristics is her jealous and vengeful nature against Zeus’ numerous lovers and illegitimate offspring.
About Hera in brief
Hera is one of the Twelve Olympians and the sister and wife of Zeus. She is the daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea and rules over Mount Olympus as queen of the gods. A matronly figure, Hera served as both the patroness and protectress of married women, presiding over weddings and blessing marital unions. One of Hera’s defining characteristics is her jealous and vengeful nature against Zeus’ numerous lovers and illegitimate offspring. Hera is commonly seen with the animals she considers sacred, including the cow, lion and the peacock. Hera may have been the first deity to whom the Greeks dedicated an enclosed roofed temple sanctuary, at Samos about 800 BCE. There were also temples to Hera in Olympia, Corinth, Tiryns, Perachora and the sacred island of Delos. In the book Iliad, ivare, the Queen of Heaven declares: ‘The three cities I love best, the ox-eyed Queen of the Heavens, are Argos, Sparta and Mycenaean city-states, where the festivals in her honor were celebrated’ The name of Hera has several possible and mutually exclusive etymologies; one possibility is to connect it with Greek hōra, season, and to interpret it as ripe for marriage. According to Plutarch, Hera was an allegorical name and an anagram of aēr. So begins the section on Hera in Walter Burkert’s Greek Religion. Hera was the greatest freestanding and earliest freestanding goddess in the Greek mainland.
She was especially worshipped at her sanctuary that stood between the former Mycaean states of Argos and Argenae, and in the sacred city of Mycenean city of Dela. The temple created by the Rhoecus sculptors and architects was destroyed between 570–560 BCE. This was replaced by the Polycratean temple of 540–530 BCE. In one of these temples we see a forest of 155 columns. There is also no evidence of tiles on this temple suggesting either the temple was never finished or that the Temple of Hera was open to the sky. The Heraion of Samos, which was replaced later by the Heraion, is one- of the largest of all Greek temples. There were many temples built on this site so evidence is somewhat confusing and archaeological dates are uncertain. The museum there contains figures of gods and suppliants and other votive offerings from Armenia, Babylon, Iran, Assyria, Egypt, testimony to the reputation which this sanctuary of Hera enjoyed and to the large influx of pilgrims. Compared to this mighty goddess, who also possessed the earliest temple at Olympia and two of the great fifth and sixth century temples of Paestum, the termagant of Homer and the myths of Homer is an almost comic figure… Hera is anAlmost comic figure, according to Burkert. The word ‘Hera’ means Mistress as a feminine to Heros, Master.
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This page is based on the article Hera published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
