Hera, Queen of the Gods

Greetings, fans of Greek mythology! After having spoken somewhat at length about Zeus, let's talk about his twin sister, Hera.
Hera, one of the original six Olympians (Demeter, Zeus, Hestia, Hades, Poseidon), was born as Zeus's twin from her mother Rhea's womb, but was immediately consumed by Cronus, who was in the habit of swallowing all of his just-born children so that he needn't fear being supplanted by them, as he had conquered his own father Ouranos (Uranus). After Zeus had returned from Crete, and had given Cronus the emetic that caused him to belch forth all of his children, Hera helped defeat the Titans in the Titanomachy, or War between the Gods and the Titans.
After Zeus became king of the sky and supreme ruler amongst the gods, he promptly fell in love with Hera. To us mere mortals, this might seem a bit, well, strange, since Hera was after all his twin sister, but things are very different for the gods. Hera wanted nothing to do with Zeus, and refused his offer of marriage. Not to be outdone, Zeus planned a clever ruse to trick Hera into marrying him.
Hera's favorite bird was the cuckoo, which sang a pretty little "cuckoo, cuckoo." One day, a marvelous cuckoo bird landed on Hera's shoulder and began cooing oh so sweetly; Hera had had quite the day with Zeus badgering her, so she said, perhaps with not enough foresight, "If only you were Zeus, I'd marry you in a heartbeat." Imagine Hera's surprise when the sweet little cuckoo bird suddenly transformed into the commanding Zeus himself, who immediately held her to her promise!
And thus Hera was forced to marry Zeus. The gods could never renege on a promise or even a hint of a promise that they had made; it seemed as if the river Styx, or the river of the Unbreakable Oath, were always nearby.
Zeus and Hera had three children together, including Hephaestus (Roman: Vulcan); Ares (Roman: Mars), and Hebe, the goddess of youth. Hera spent her life being, well, displeased with Zeus since he had many other children as well, but again, the life of the gods, especially the king of the gods, was different than with mortals. In fact, Hera was so disgruntled with her life as the wife of Zeus that, when she asked the Theban prophet Teiresias, who had lived life as both a man and a woman (after seeing an oroboros, which had changed him from a man into a woman for nine years), whether it was better to be a man or a woman, and Teiresias had responded that it was much better to be a woman, she struck him, in a fury, blind.
Hera was the goddess of marriage. We see that today through Hera's Roman name, Juno, from which English derived its month name "June." June, then as now, was considered the best month in which to get married because of the pleasantness of its weather: neither too cold nor too hot.
Hera's symbol was the peacock, her favorite bird. This derives from the story of Io. Io was a young girl with whom Zeus fell madly in love. Hera was suspicious, so one day she found out that Zeus was meeting Io under a tree, and she stormed off to confront him. When she arrived, however, all she saw was Zeus with a white cow; being even more suspicious, Hera set her guard, Argus Panoptes, a gruesome monster who had 100 eyes (centoculated) to watch over the supposed cow. Zeus, in turn, sent Hermes to try to put the unsleeping Argus to sleep with a very boring tale that lasted for a very long time...and in fact, when all of the eyes of Argus did at long last close, Hermes promptly chopped off his head. Hera, sad for the death of her favorite watchman, transferred the eyes of Argus into the tail of the peacock, which we can still see today.
Stay tuned for my next blog post, which will discuss the sister of both Zeus and Hera, Demeter, the goddess of the Earth and the harvest.

Mythology Book Corner:  This book corner is devoted to great reads on mythology.   In my last post on Zeus, I suggested the first book in The Lightning Thief series.  Once getting hooked on that one, you would be hard pressed not to continue!  And so, the sequel to The Lightning Thief is The Sea of Monsters, a great read.  Check it out!

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Zeus, King of the Greek Gods

Greetings, mythology fans! Let's begin our mythological musings with the King of the Greek Gods, Zeus himself.
The Greek god Zeus, or Jupiter or Jove to the Romans, was the last child of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He was the twin of Hera, the goddess of marriage. Cronus (Saturn to the Romans) was afraid that his children (Demeter, Hades, Hestia, Poseidon, and Hera) would someday conquer him, so he ate them all (a neat and handy trick); Rhea, however, in turn tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone before he could swallow Zeus, thus saving him from the fate of spending eternity in his father's stomach (not a pleasant thought!).
The infant Zeus was whisked away by Rhea to the island of Crete to be raised by Amalthea, a magical goat whose horn gave Zeus all the food he could ever want to eat. One of Zeus's favorite toys was a golden ball with deep blue rings that left a track like a shooting star when he threw it, something which surely amused him greatly, being able to throw it from one end of the island to the other. When he had finally grown up, he went back to humbly serve his father Cronus, and promptly tricked him into swallowing wine that had an emetic poison in it, which caused him to throw up all of Zeus's brothers and sisters that he had swallowed: Demeter, Hades, Hestia, Poseidon, and Hera. This led to a huge war (imagine floating about in gastric juices for years and you can understand why the gods rebelled against the Titans) called the Titanomachy, or the war between the gods and the Titans. The gods won (more later on this most monstrous of battles). Zeus was installed as supreme ruler, but only because he drew the longest straw (imagine getting a job for an eternity by a silly game of straws) of the three drawn; Poseidon's lot fell to the seas of the world, and the unlucky Hades had to dwell within the dark of the Underworld.
The symbols of Zeus were the lightning bolts (which the Cyclopes, or great one-eyed giants, fashioned for him in their forge), the huge oak trees (the largest of trees in Greece, and also because they attract lightning), and the eagle, mightiest of birds (Zeus's eagle is still seen today on the back of the US dollar bill). The word "Zeus" represents the sound of a lightning bolt cutting and sizzling through the air, just as the word "Jupiter" mimics the sound of lightning striking the Earth.
Zeus could defeat any god, but he could not kill them, since they were immortal (Latin for "deathless"). He also possessed an elixir or magic potion that could heal someone if he were at death's door, but not if she or he had already passed into the real of Hades, the grasping god of the dead. As Lord of the Sky, he had a blue nimbus encircling his head, representing his power over all other gods.
Stay tune for my next post when I will discuss Hera, the goddess of marriage and disgruntled wife of Zeus!

Mythology Book Corner: this corner will be devoted to great books on mythology!  Let's start out with the wonderful Lightning Thief series by Rick Riordan.  The first book of which is The Lightning Thief, a fabulous read filled with modern day encounters of the Greek gods.  You might even encounter, well, Mr. Brunner!  Cheers!  

*Interesting fact*: the stone that Cronus swallowed ended up at Delphi, the omphalos or center of the Greek mythological world (where Apollo predicted the future through the seer Pythia)
*Interesting fact*: the horn of the magical goat Amalthea gave rise to our idea of the cornucopia, or horn of plenty.
*Interesting fact*: all three of Zeus's symbols are in some way related: lightning is the most powerful of the forces in the sky, just as the oak and the eagle are respectively the most powerful of the trees and the birds; lightning is also attracted to oak trees (it hits those trees more often than any other).
*Interesting fact*: The god Pan, king of the satyrs (half men, half goats), was once rumored to have died, despite the fact that he was immortal. Myths can be highly irrational!

Interested in English vocabulary? Check out my Greek and Latin root words blog!
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