The mythology of ancient Greece and Italy

96 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE.
Chapter VII.
HERA :—ARES, HEPHiESTOS, HEBE.
"Hprj/'Hpa. Juno,
In Homer this goddess is one of the children of Kronos and
Rhea, and wife and sister to Zeus a .
When the latter placed
his sire in Tartaros, Rhea committed Hera to the care of
Oceanos and Tethys, by whom she was carefully nurtured in
their grotto-palace b . She and Zeus had however previously
' mingled in love' unknown to their parents .
Hesiod, who
gives her the same parents, says that she was the last spouse
of Zeus d . According to the Argive legend, Zeus, who had
long secretly loved his sister, watched one day when she was
out walking alone near Mount Thronax, and raising a great
storm of wind and rain fled shivering and trembling, under
the form of a cuckoo, to seek shelter on the knees of the unsuspecting
maiden. She covered the poor bird, as she thought
him, with her mantle, and Zeus then resuming his proper
form accomplished his wishes. But when she had implored
him in the name of her mother to spare her, he gave her a
solemn promise to make her his wife e ,—a promise which he
faithfully performed. Henceforth the hill Thronax was named
Coccygion (Cuckoo-hill) e .
In the Ilias (for she does not appear in the Odyssey) Hera,
as the queen of Zeus, shares in his honours. The god is re-
presented as a little in awe of her tongue, yet daunting her
by his menaces. On one occasion he reminds her how once,
when she had raised a storm, which drove his son Heracles
out of his course at sea, he tied her hands together and suspended
her with anvils at her feet between heaven and earth f ;
and when her son Hephaestos would aid her, he flung him down
from OlymposS. In this poem the goddess appears dwelling in
a
II. iv. 59.
d Theog. 921.
f
II. xv. 18. seq.
b II. xiv. 202. seq.
c
II. xiv. 295.
e Sch. Theocr. xv. 64. from Aristotle. Paus. ii. 17. 4.
g
II. i. 590. seq. compared with xv. 22.