Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [103]
The divine craftsman, he also builds the palaces of the gods and plays a key role in a very important myth—the creation of the first woman, Pandora (see below, What was in Pandora’s “box”?).
Hera (Juno) Hera, the queen of the gods, is presented in Hesiod’s poems as the daughter of Cronus, but she may have originated as a pre-Greek earth goddess, and in the view of some modern scholars, may have been a widely worshipped deity in Greece before Zeus arrived with the Mycenaean invaders. Chiefly a goddess of marriage, women’s sexuality, and fertility, like the Egyptian Hathor, Hera is associated with cattle and was often called “cow-eyed.”
As Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera is usually most preoccupied with his constant sexual misadventures. In wooing Hera, Zeus had disguised himself as a cuckoo bird in a rainstorm to win her sympathy. When she picks up the pitiful, wet bird, Zeus drops his disguise and rapes her. It was the beginning of their frequently stormy relationship, which is at the center of so many of the Greek myths. Yet, in the face of Zeus’s many affairs, Hera never wavers in her commitment to her husband, and her fidelity has been taken to represent the ideal Greek wife, upholding monogamy—at least on the part of wives—and the orderly inheritance of property and rank in Greek culture. She has three children with Zeus: Ares, one of the Olympians; Eileithyia, a patron of midwives and childbirth; and Hebe, the embodiment of youth.
Hera and Zeus are also supposed to be the parents of the smith god Hephaestus. But in Hesiod’s account of his origins, Hera conceives Hephaestus on her own, in an act of jealous revenge, so typical of the motivating force at the heart of many of the myths about Hera. Frequently betrayed by Zeus, Hera often turns her anger toward his lovers and many offspring. One lover, Semele, was burned up. Another, the young princess Io, whom Zeus had turned into a heifer to conceal her from Hera, is tormented by a gadfly and gallops all over the world with a perpetual itch. Hera may have reserved her greatest anger for the hero Heracles (see below, What kind of hero kills his wife and children?), the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, princess of Thebes.
Hermes (Mercury) Messenger of the gods, famed for his winged feet and helmet, Hermes is also the patron of travelers. His name has been thought to derive from the ancient word herm, for “stone heap,” as it was a common practice for travelers to mark their trails by piling up stones, not as a guide to return but simply as a symbol of having passed by. (A common worldwide tradition, such stone piles, or cairns, appear in the Bible, ancient America, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the ancient world. Such markers are still traditionally left by modern hikers who “mark trail” by adding to stone piles.) But he is also a trickster, and from the moment of his birth, Hermes gets into mischief, starting by stealing the sacred cattle of his brother Apollo, an act which also cast him as the patron of thieves.
Hermes is the messenger of the gods, as well, and the protector of human messengers—men who had the dangerous but important job of traveling between hostile communities, delivering diplomatic messages. In ancient times, messengers were not supposed to be harmed, just as modern diplomats are supposed to travel with immunity.
Additionally, as god of travel, Hermes has the job of escorting the dead in their journey to Hades.
His most notable offspring is Pan (Faunus), the pastoral god of woods and pastures and the protector of shepherds and their flocks. Half-man and half-goat, Pan is one of the few Greek deities who is not all human, but is also one of the most popular gods. Believed to have a wild, unpredictable—and especially lusty—nature, he can fill humans and animals with sudden, unreasoning terror, which is why the word “panic” comes from his name. Pan has many love