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As with so many stories about the queen of the gods, this one begins with her husband, Zeus, raping a woman.
Greek mythology ™
The Romans’ version of Zeus was Jupiter or Jove, and they knew Hera as Juno. He greets her as virgo Iove digna5 – a virgin worthy of Jove. These are words to strike fear into the heart of any girl who doesn’t wish to be assaulted by the king of the gods. And Io is just such a young woman.
Like all the most seductive speeches, this one finishes with the words ‘Don’t run away from me.’
Jupiter responds by cloaking the wide earth in darkness, so he can rape her in secret.
Ugh.
And yet, Io is the one who experiences shame. Although she’ll barely have a chance to feel it.
This is not Juno’s first rodeo; she knows what the odds are. She orders the fog to make itself scarce. But this isn’t Jupiter’s first rodeo either. Guessing that Juno will be looking for him and the girl he has attacked, he turns Io into a snow-white cow.
Juno isn’t fooled, of course: we know that she and her husband have performed this same dance many times before.
She sets the monster Argus to watch over Io; he has a hundred eyes in his head, Ovid explains,9 which rest two at a time. If this seems like overkill – a ninety-eight-eyed panopticon to check that one cow doesn’t get up to much – then Juno’s escalating responses to Jupiter’s continuing infidelities are going to perplex you further.
It is a constant theme in the Metamorphoses that someone who loses their voice loses their power.
The pathos only builds when the naiads – her sisters – and the river – the god of which, remember, is also her father – don’t recognize her.
Finally Zeus decides to god up and put Io out of this misery. He sends Mercury (Hermes, to the Greeks) to kill Argus and free her from her awful imprisonment.
There really is nothing like Greek myth for reminding us that the countryside is rarely the blissful idyll for young women that it is for young men and gods. More frequently it is the source of sexual threat and constant anxiety.
And the daughter of Saturn – a poetic variation on Juno – plucks out these eyes and places them like glittering gemstones in the tail feathers of her bird.
JFC.
Juno persecutes the traumatized cow by sending a horrifying Fury to pursue her. The cow flees in terror across the entire world, eventually finding herself on the bank of the Nile.
She is still too afraid to speak at first, in case she only makes the lowing sound she made as a cow. Again, voicelessness means powerlessness, and regaining human form is not enough to give her back any sense of power; it takes time for her to learn to speak again.
But however beautiful these birds are, the eye-catching tail is a reminder of her failed attempts to keep her eyes – at one remove – on her husband and one of the many young women he desires and accosts.
The alliance of Zeus and Hera is an early example of someone marrying the girl next door. Or slightly closer than that: Zeus and Hera are both children of Rhea and Kronos, but the latter is so neurotic about a prophecy predicting he’ll be overthrown by his own son that he swallows his children whole when they are born.
Several ancient authors – Homer, Ovid, Pseudo-Hyginus14 – describe her as the foster daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, both Titans and parents to multiple river gods. Hera seems to be quite a dutiful daughter, visiting these parents and asking them for help.
We are so accustomed to viewing Hera through the lens of shrewish wife and implacable enemy. But here she seems young and vulnerable, thinking of Tethys, who took care of her when she was in need.
Pausanias won’t tell us any more about the pomegranate because it is forbidden (due to its connection to the Eleusinian Mysteries, we must presume. These highly secret religious rituals focused on Demeter and Persephone, who was notoriously force-fed pomegranate seeds by her uncle, kidnapper, and then husband, Hades. The pomegranate was often therefore associated with Persephone, and with the dead more generally. The sacred rites of this cult were not to be discussed outside their practice, and Pausanias is scrupulous about observing this silence.
It seems that his desire not to blaspheme the Eleusinian Mysteries is quite a bit stronger than his belief in a god turning into a cuckoo to seduce a goddess who wants a pet bird.
Having dismissed the notion of a seductive swan many times before (the guise in which he impregnates Leda, mother of Helen of Sparta), I would now like to add my suspicion that I would find this lascivious cuckoo no more alluring than the swan lothario.
Then he marries Themis (the names are so similar, I always assume he chooses these wives for the increased chance of bluffing his way past saying the wrong name at a crucial moment); she gives birth to multiple children, including the Fates. Zeus fathers the Graces with Eurynome, then goes to the bed of Demeter, who gives birth to Persephone. And then, as seen in the previous chapter, he fathers the gold-crowned Muses with their mother Mnemosyne. Still short of a full set of Olympian gods, he impregnates Leto, who gives birth to Apollo and Artemis.
Surely this – her late arrival in the bed of Zeus – might begin to explain why her animus is so strong. Perhaps she recognized that she was never first in his mind, just one in a series of conquests to create mothers of his divine offspring.
Every goddess who precedes her in Zeus’s affections produces divine offspring. And almost every mortal woman he subsequently pursues then produces a demigod or a fully fledged god
It is just about possible to impose a romantic rescue narrative here if one omits virtually all salient details.
She has been refusing sex with him because of their mother, i.e., because they have the same mother. But marriage would render this situation less problematic (for Hera, if not for us).
So the issue seems to be one of formalizing the relationship rather than avoiding one because of its incestuous element.
So secrecy, adventure, and discord are gifted into this relationship right at its commencement.
Hera gets her own way, in other words, by exploiting the sexual desire of a god who so often exploits others.
Warrented.
What is so interesting about them as a couple is that they manage to create discord even when none is needed: Zeus already knows the outcome of the Trojan War will favour the Greeks.
No wonder she needs so many tricks and allies to get her own way. She is performing a sort of divine diplomacy, forging alliances to ensure that the Greeks do indeed win the war they are fated to win.
We sometimes overlook this, focusing instead on her unquenchable animus against the Trojans. Homer implies she feels this way because Paris awarded the golden apple ‘for the most beautiful’ to Aphrodite rather than to Hera.
Thetis, the mother of Achilles, is a powerful goddess in her own right, and Hera takes a moment to remind Zeus that she (Hera) raised Thetis herself. She has an almost grandmotherly relationship to Achilles. Hera is so often associated with the persecution of women and children embroiled in her husband’s desires, we almost overlook that she can be maternal even with children who aren’t her own, so long as her jealousy isn’t roused.
Hera can be kind and placatory on occasion, even when she has failed to get what she wants.
And while we might wonder if she could just get over the minor mortal insults, we see that Zeus himself enjoys reminding her of all the times when he has preferred someone else.
I would hesitate to offer anyone relationship advice, but just in case you need it: this is an absolutely catastrophic way to compliment anyone and I urge you never to do it, even if it sounds fine in your head. It is not fine.
How many times can one woman be made to feel like she has come second in a man’s estimation?
Hera has beautiful big brown eyes, like a cow, so Zeus makes Io even more like one. Whatever the desirable quality, Hera always seems to fall short by a fraction.
Unexpected snake sex obviously has hormonal effects that science has yet to uncover.
But Hera is more frequently angered by personal slights, and she is especially antagonized by Zeus’s habit of having children without her.
As any woman would.
Hera is right – as usual – to suspect Zeus of dubious behaviour here: although Athene is born from his head, fully formed, she is not as motherless as all that. Zeus had impregnated and then swallowed the pregnant Metis so she wouldn’t produce a son who might overthrow him.
But Hephaestus is not defenceless after all: he vengefully (mnēsikakōn in Greek: it even looks malevolent) sends his mother a gift, a golden throne. But his craftsman’s skill is superhuman, of course, and the throne is rigged. Hephaestus has attached invisible bindings to it, so that anyone who sits in the chair is tied to it.
As one does.
One of the things that is most awful about Hera, once you have her ill will directed at you, is that she never seems to tire of vengeance.
Hera attacks women, babies, gods, and men with a cheerless indifference to the merits of each case.
Desperate to punish Alcmene for her pregnancy, Hera prevents her from giving birth at her due time (she charges a goddess of childbirth, Eileithyia – Lucina to the Romans – to intervene).
But then a slave woman, Galanthis, realizes that the obstacle to a safe birth is divine in origin, so she plays a trick. Rushing out of Alcmene’s rooms, she notices Lucina and declares that the baby has been born and that congratulations are in order. Lucina is so distracted by this that she leaps up and unclasps her hands. This loosening of her body loosens Alcmene’s, and the baby is safely delivered.
Her name forming the beginning of his is not a coincidence, by the way: he is named ‘Glory of Hera’, presumably in an attempt to win over the furious goddess.
The labours are one of the most enduring stories of any Greek hero, and none of them would have happened if Hera hadn’t loathed him so utterly.
But even after his labours are completed, Hera’s rage is not spent. As Heracles sails away from Troy (which he sacked a generation before the more celebrated war that finishes the city for good), Hera sends vicious storms to endanger him.
