Figure

Hera

Matriarchs

In Greek narrative tradition Hera is a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, swallowed and later disgorged by her own father alongside her siblings, and becomes the last wife Zeus takes, sharing his throne as queen of Olympus. Their marriage is recorded as troubled throughout by Zeus's many other unions, and Hera's own myths turn again and again on retribution against his lovers and their children rather than against Zeus himself. She bears him Ares and Eileithyia, and, in a scene Hesiod is explicit was without union at all, bears Hephaestus alone in answer to Zeus's own solitary birth of Athena. As protector of marriage and childbirth she governs the very domain her own story most tests.

Facts

Life

Office Heldthe subject's own account

Queen of the gods and Zeus's wife and sister; goddess of marriage, women and the protection of women in childbirth 3

Place of Activity

Her two greatest cult centers, the Heraion of Samos and the Heraion of Argos, were among the earliest large stone temples built anywhere in Greece, evidence that her formal cult and monumental worship were established well before comparable building projects existed for several other Olympian gods. 1

Practice

Lineage

Daughter of Cronus and Rhea; the last and principal wife of Zeus 2

Origins

Origin of the Name

The etymology of her name remains disputed, with some scholars connecting it to the Greek word for hero or for season and others deriving it from a pre-Greek substrate language, and no single proposal is universally accepted among classicists. 1

Identity

Symbol

Ancient cult and art mark her consistently with the peacock, its tail later read by Roman writers as an emblem of her watchfulness, and with the pomegranate, carried by cult statues such as the Argive Hera as a sign of fertility and marriage. 1

Gender

Female 2

Attestation

Historicity

Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2

Veneration Todaythe subject's own account

Historically attested; no continuous cult 3

Traditions Revering This Figurethe subject's own account

Ancient Greek Religion 3

History

Historical Notethe subject's own account

Greek myth repeatedly casts Hera as jealous and vengeful toward Zeus's many lovers and their children by him, most persistently toward Heracles, whose very name means "glory of Hera" despite her lifelong persecution of him. 3

Attributions

Mythic Associationthe subject's own account

Epithets include Boopis, "cow-eyed," reflecting her archaic identity as a cow goddess, and Teleia, "bringing the fulfilment of marriage." Her emblems are the pomegranate, the scepter and a crown; her sacred animals are cattle and, from the Hellenistic period on, the peacock. The Romans identified her with Juno. 3

Cult

Attributes and Iconography

Depicted in classical art crowned and enthroned, often accompanied by a peacock, a bird whose tail was said in one myth to bear the hundred eyes of the slain giant Argus, which she placed there in his memory. 2

Position Profile

Key Text

Theogony 2

Veneration

Patronage

Hesiod's Theogony names her Zeus's last and principal wife, mother by him of Ares, Hebe and Eileithyia, and later tradition made her patron above all of marriage and of lawful wives, a role at odds with the myths of jealous vengeance that same later tradition tells of her against Zeus's lovers. 2

In Other Languages (42 names)

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Wife of Zeus and Guardian of Marriage

Hera was a daughter of Cronus and Rhea, swallowed at birth like her siblings and freed when Zeus forced their father to disgorge them after the Titanomachy. She became Zeus's wife and, in most tellings, his last and principal consort, presiding as queen of the Olympian gods over marriage, women and childbirth even as her own marriage became a byword in Greek myth for jealousy and strife. Zeus fathered children by a long series of other goddesses and mortal women, and Hera's anger at these unions drives a large share of Greek mythology's plots: she persecuted Heracles from before his birth to well into his adult labors specifically because he was Zeus's son by the mortal Alcmene, sent madness upon him that led him to kill his own children, and later obstructed him at nearly every turn of the labors imposed on him afterward. She played a comparably hostile role toward other lovers and offspring of Zeus, including Io, whom she is said to have transformed into a cow and set the many eyed giant Argus to guard, and Leto, whom she prevented from finding a place to give birth to Apollo and Artemis until the floating island of Delos took her in. After the messenger god Hermes killed Argus to free Io on Zeus's orders, Hera is said to have taken the giant's hundred eyes and set them into the tail of the peacock, the bird kept sacred to her ever since.

The Goddess of the Great Sanctuaries at Argos and Samos

Hera's worship centered on some of the oldest and most substantial sanctuaries in the entire Greek world, at Argos and at Samos, sites whose temples ranked among the largest built anywhere in Greece well before the classical period. The Heraion of Argos, on a ridge overlooking the Argive plain, served the region's leading cities as a shared religious center and is where excavation has recovered votive offerings stretching back into the Bronze Age, evidence that her cult there long predates the literary myths that later fixed her personality in marital jealousy. The Heraion of Samos grew even larger, eventually housing one of the biggest temples in the ancient Greek world, and drew offerings and dedications from across the eastern Mediterranean, a scale that marks Hera there as a major regional goddess of the island rather than only a jealous consort in someone else's story. Festivals in her honor, generally called Heraia, were held in numerous Greek cities and typically centered on marriage, fertility and the passage of young women into adult womanhood, a civic role that sat alongside, and was largely independent of, the mythological Hera whose feuds with Zeus's other lovers fill so much surviving poetry.

Connections

Associated With

Ares

This source names Ares directly: "She bears him Ares and Eileithyia, and, in a scene Hesiod is explicit was without union at all, bears Hephaestus alone in answer to Zeus's own solitary birth of Athena."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Athena

This source names Athena directly: "answer to Zeus's own solitary birth of Athena."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Cronus

This source names Cronus directly: "Hera is a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, swallowed and later disgorged by her own father alongside her siblings, and becomes the last wife Zeus takes, sharing his throne as queen of Olympus."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Eileithyia

This source names Eileithyia directly: "She bears him Ares and Eileithyia, and, in a scene Hesiod is explicit was without union at all, bears Hephaestus alone in answer to Zeus's own solitary birth of Athena."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Hephaestus

This source names Hephaestus directly: "was without union at all, bears Hephaestus alone in answer to Zeus's own solitary birth of Athena."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Linear B

This source names Hera directly: "but their offering lists name Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus and Artemis some five hundred years before Homer, which established that those gods were worshipped in the Bronze Age and not..."

Source The Decipherment of Linear BJohn Chadwick

Rhea

This source names Rhea directly: "is a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, swallowed and later disgorged by her own father alongside her siblings, and becomes the last wife Zeus takes, sharing his throne as queen of Olympus."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Zeus

This source names Zeus directly: "siblings, and becomes the last wife Zeus takes, sharing his throne as queen of Olympus."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Belongs to Tradition

Ancient Greek Religion

Source TheogonyHesiod

Child Of

Cronus

Hera's own description: "a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Rhea

Hera's own description: "a daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea." Cronus side already fixed by w1180; this is the Rhea side.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Children

Ares

Ares's own description: "the son of Zeus and Hera."

Source The Homeric HymnsAnonymous; ascribed in antiquity to Homer

Depicted In

Hera Farnese

The statue's own name, Hera Farnese, is the goddess's own name; a Roman marble copy of a Greek cult image type.

Source Hera Farnese, Wikipedia

Married To

Zeus

Hera's deity-register description states she is "sister and wife of Zeus"; deity-register Zeus/Hera already carry married-to (confirmed live before writing). This adds the same edge for the character-register pair.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Originated In

Greece

Source Hera (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Both entities carry live child-of edges to Cronus and Rhea (RelationshipId-checked before this write); Rhea's own stored description names all six -- Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus -- as her children by Cronus, per Theogony, making them siblings.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Hestia

Source TheogonyHesiod

Poseidon

Source TheogonyHesiod

Zeus

Source TheogonyHesiod

Sources

1. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition

Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012s.v. HeraView the Source

2. Theogony

Hesiod

on the birth of the children of Cronus and Rhea
on Hera's birth to Cronus and Rhea

View the Source

3. Hera (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026

on Hera's epithets, emblems, the Juno identification and her hostility toward Heracles
Hera is the stepmother and enemy of Heracles. The name Heracles means "Glory of Hera".
Introduction
Lead section
In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; Ancient Greek: Ἥρα, romanized: Hḗrā; Ἥρη, Hḗrē in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth.

View the Source

Hera Farnese, Wikipedia

WikipediaDepicted In: Hera Farnese, Naples Archaeological Museum, inv. 6027View the Source

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Hera

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Originated In

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