The Ancients - Hera: Queen of the Gods

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Hera, the wife and sister of Zeus, goddess of marriage, royalty and women, is the Queen of the Gods in Greek mythology.Despite her seat of power, she is an often maligned figure, typically characterised as the jealous and vengeful wife of Zeus due to his extramarital affairs and illegitimate children. Though archaeological evidence shows that Hera was a pre-Greek deity, pre-eminent to Zeus, and nearly every temple dedicated to Zeus, was a temple first originally dedicated to Hera. In this episode, Tristan Hughes is joined by Ancient Greek historian Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts of Kings College London to uncover the truth about Hera, find out where she came from, how she was worshipped and continued to be worshipped in her afterlives, and as a bonus why peacocks were sacred to her.If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy other episodes in the series: Zeus: King of the Gods. https://pod.fo/e/14ec89The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieThe script was written by Andrew HulseThe voice over was performed by Nichola WoolleyThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. a story of Olympus and the deathless gods who govern earth, sea and sky. That is what the priestess of Hera asks. For she has a warning to deliver. She has gathered a fresh crop of girls before her on the steps of the Hiraion, the great temple of Hira. They sit

beneath two statues, Cleobus and Bighton, the very pictures of strength hewn in stone. The girls shiver in the brother's shadow. The sun is setting, and Hera's temple is high upon the crag, but they dare not move. They watch the priestess with rapt attention. You see, these girls have been waiting for this all their short lives. They're excited. You would be too. Who hasn't yearned for that dividing line?

To know that childhood has ended. That adulthood has begun. For the girls of Argos, the transition is demarcated here by Hera. is demarcated here by Hera. Tomorrow, a harvest moon will crown the night, and under its silver gleam, the women of Argos will gather to sacrifice a white heifer in the temple. The girls will be among them. They will cross the Horion's threshold. They will make their first prayer to the queen of the gods. And with it, they will no longer be girls, but women grown. From then, Hera will be with them through every stage of their lives. As maidens, mothers and matriarchs, as virgins, wives and widows. Hers will be the hand they reach for in despair. Hers will be the name

they call in joy. Hers will be the grace that grants their wants and wishes. And that is why the warning the priestess bears is so important. That is why she asks the muses to sing this story. For prayers to Hera, like all the deathless gods, can be fickle things. So it was for the brothers Cleobus and Bighton, and their mother Clydippe, Hera's first priestess. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, well, we blew the roof off the ancient history med media world just under a month ago when we launched our brand new series all about the Greek gods and goddesses of antiquity

with an episode all about Zeus, the king of the gods, the big man. And today we're continuing the new series. I'm delighted to say we're talking all about Hera, the Queen of the Gods, the big woman. And in this series of episodes, we want to stress right from the start, it's a little different from our usual interview style. There is an interview there. We have got an interview with the brilliant Dr. Ellie Mackin-Roberts from King's College University. She explains all about Hera, her origins, how she is portrayed, her relationships with fellow Olympian gods and of course her legacy. That interview is a crux of today's episode but preceding that in all of these episodes of our Greek Gods and Goddesses series we're going to

precede the interview with a story. A story giving a sense of how these stories of the Greek gods and goddesses were passed down through generations and what they meant to the people of ancient Greece. Now this story relating to Hera that we've got today, it's all about Hera as a patron of women and the cults that worshipped her in Argos. We thought it was important to put forward this particular story because Hera can often be caricatured just as a jealous wife of Zeus. And we wanted to do more to show that Hera was so much more than this as an ancient Greek goddess. So I hope you enjoy the story.

As mentioned, following the story, we do have this brilliant interview with Dr Ellie Mackin-Roberts all about Hera. Ellie, you might know the name because she is prolific on TikTok. She's done lots of videos on TikTok, all about ancient Greek art. So do check that out if you get the chance. And so without further ado, Hera. The Musa's song reaches back through the tarnished ages to a simpler time.

Al-Ghosten is a simple place. There is no Haryam temple upon the crag yet, merely sacred ground. There are no towering city walls to defend its approach, merely markers and fence posts. And there is no great city in the plain below, merely homes quaint and quiet. One such home lies at the end of a long dirt road, a single seam in a rolling patchwork of fields and pastures. It is the home of Clydippe. And it is in chaos. You see, it is festival time. That evening, a harvest moon will crown the night.

Under its silver gleam, the women of Argos will gather to sacrifice a white heifer on the crag's sacred ground. Clydippe will lead it. It is she who will build the pyre. It is she who will wield the bronze blade. And when the cow is slain, it is she who will divide the mortal portion of meat from the deathless portion of bone, and cook it all upon the flame. But there is a problem. In the night, a great storm has blown through the valley, ripping up fences and putting her animals to flight. She has no oxen to drag her cart and its load of wood for the pyre.

What is she to do? To make no sacrifice would be a grievous insult to Hera. She is Argos' only god. The other deathless have not yet set foot in the valley. Not even Zeus, father of gods and men. Sing then, muses of Cleobus and Bighton, Clydippe's children, for they are the most dutiful of sons. Without a second thought, the brothers yoke themselves to their mother's cart. They are strong, and before long they make the foot of the crag.

But that is where the true labour begins. The cart is heavy, the ascent steep, and the path uneven. There is the bite of the yoke too. It bears upon their shoulders, rending flesh first red, then raw, then ripped. Till it is not merely sweat they leave on the path behind them, but blood, too. The brothers carry on regardless, for they are the most dutiful of sons.

As they climb, the sun begins to set. Shadows from the rock stretch and sharpen. Sandals slip, and more than once, one brother loses his grip entirely, leaving the other to strain with the weight of the whole burden. But they make no complaint. They ask no help nor relief. Even when the other villagers from Argos gather in their wake, leading the lone white heifer, the brothers decline assistance. They vow thek is their own, and it is clear to all, they are the most dutiful of sons. So the villagers of Argos shout encouragement instead. And when finally, finally, Cleobus and Byton reach the flat terrace that will one day seat the Horaeum, it is to the sound of deafening cheers.

The admiration of Argos' women echoes so loudly about the crag that it sounds like ten thousand voices, not a mere hundred. The festival then can begin. As the harvest moon crowns the night, Clydippe builds the pyre. She wields the bronze blade, and when the cow is slain, she divides the mortal portion of meat from the deathless portion of bone, and cooks it all upon the flame till smoke fills the bowl of the sky. Only then, with hearers' appetite sated, can the prayers begin.

And what did the women wish for, you ask? Bountiful harvests? Some of them, yes. Good marriages? Others, indeed. Some of them, yes, good marriages. Others, indeed, relief from their aches and anxieties, their pains and problems. The greatest number still. But what of Clydippe? She has only one thing on her mind.

My sons have shown you great honour, Queen of the Gods. She has only one thing on her mind. My sons have shown you great honour, Queen of the Gods. So I ask that you grant them a great honour too. And with that prayer, Clydippe closes her eyes and falls asleep next to her sons. Now, Hera, she agrees. Cleobus and Bighton have proved themselves the most dutiful of sons, and they are worthy of a reward. But what? The goddess turns ideas this way and that. She weaves her thoughts and

winds her reckonings. And she thinks upon the great heroes of Greece. Their noble deeds echo through the ages, but each is tarnished by an ignoble death. Theseus is hurled from a cliff, noble death. Theseus is hurled from a cliff, Jason crushed by his own ship, Perseus slain by his own sword. Mortals, Hera concludes,

cannot be trusted with their own legacies. And so, that will be my reward for your sons, Clydippe. They will not wake again. Death will be granted to them in this moment,

in perfect happiness, praised by all who knew them. They will never have the opportunity to besmirch their own legend. What more can mortal men ask? Build my temple here. Raise statues of Cleobus and Bighton. And all the world will know, as long as I am worshipped in Argos, that they were the most dutiful of sons.

The muses cease to sing, to dance, to play the lyre and the flute, and in the silence that follows the girls of Argos are left to shiver in the moonlight. Heed this story a warning, says the priestess of Hera. As women grown, you will pray to the queen of the gods often, but think carefully on your wants, think carefully on your wishes, and never forget that deathless gods do not see the world the way that we mortals do. Ellie, it is great to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. You're more than welcome. It's great to be doing it in person too.

We're continuing our Gods and Goddesses series and the next one, Hera. Ellie, let's go straight into it. Who was Hera? Well, Hera was the Olympian queen of the gods. She's the wife of Zeus, sister of Zeus, daughter of Cronos and Rhea. She is most generally a goddess of marriage. She's also a goddess of royalty and of women and has a really interesting afterlife as well, where I think she's been kind of much maligned as this jealous and vindictive sort of goddess that doesn't really track with what we know about her worship and the archaeological record of the way that the ancient Greeks approached her. Well, I'd love to get into all of that. So much to unpack from what you just said there, Ellie. But let's start from the beginning. I know with myths, it's so difficult to say

one particular myth. There are probably various versions. But what's the general view of Hera's origin story? So Hera was originally a pre-Greek indigenous goddess. Herodotus tells us this in his histories. She is found in the Linear B tablets. Hera, one of the most closely associated names from Linear B to later Greek, she's found in tablets from Mycenae and Pylos. And really, she was central divinity from this indigenous, highly respected agricultural society with her fertility attributes. And she's one of the very few gods that Herodotus doesn't say was imported from Egypt. All of those divinities, those indigenous divinities, are actually goddesses. And then she is subsumed by this Greek mythology and she becomes subservient to Zeus within that.

But the archaeological record demonstrates that she is still a very, very eminent goddess and in a lot of places actually pre-eminent to Zeus in religious practice. How interesting. So Hera, it sounds like Zeus was similar. You have mentions of him in the Linear B tablets too. So the name Hera dates back to the Mycenaean period, to the Bronze Age. That's fascinating to hear. And in fact, probably before, because she is one of these pre-Greek indigenous goddesses. Obviously, we don't have a decipherment of Linear A, and it seems like the Minoan societies weren't connected

to this pre-Greek indigenous society, which was mainly focused around the Peloponnese and the mainland. So it seems very likely that her name as it comes to us today is probably one of, if not the oldest Greek divinities that we have record of. Well, there you go. That's a good fact right there to kick you off, Ellie. So you mentioned the name Herodotus there. And if we go to other literary sources of ancient Greece, in regards to what they believed, what did they think? How does Hera come into the pantheon of gods, as it were? So in the Iliad, she plays a huge role as a protagonist on the side of the Greeks,

the Achaeans. She says that her favourite cities are Mycenae, Argos and Sparta. She's called the Argive goddess countless times in Homer. And even though in the artistic record, we see her in those cities in military guises as the protector, we don't find that in the literary record we see her in those cities in military guises as the protector we don't find that in the literary sources where she is sort of characterized more as a backseat meddler than as an active participant in the war and this all links particularly to her affinity for Sparta in the poem although in real life actually what we find is her worship spread throughout the Peloponnese and particularly centred around Argos. So is that something to take note straight away that for the worship of Hera, it is centred,

I'm guessing maybe we do see examples of it across the Greek world, but is there very much a focus, a nucleus in the Peloponnese of Greece? There really is. So we find actually the oldest temples that we have are temples to Hera and her worship goes back to pre-temple household worship. We find, you know, examples of early apsidals, house style temples to her so this is before the introduction of the Doric and Ionic orders and then the very first what we would think of as proper Greek temples with the columns around the sides are all to Hera and actually her worship is integral in this architectural revolution of both the Doric order in particular and also in the spread of temple architecture and monumental architecture.

Because isn't Olympia a place which we normally associate with the Temple of Zeus? But there's a Temple of Hera that precedes it, isn't there? Well, the Temple of Zeus, well, the sanctuary at Olympia was originally a sanctuary of Hera. And we find evidence of worship of Hera at least 150 years before the introduction of worship of Zeus. And this is evidence still hundreds and hundreds of years later

when Pausanias, sort of second century CE, comes and looks at the site and he discusses one cult statue in particular, which is an enthroned Hera with Zeus standing to her side, bearded, helmeted, sort of in the regular Zeus sort of guise. But he is very much subservient to her in that representation. And we actually find this all over the place. So we often find examples of Hera and Zeus being worshipped together. And in every instance, we have earlier archaeological evidence

for Hera worship than Zeus worship. And there are no places that we know of where their worship was jointly founded. It's always Hera's worship was founded and Zeus was brought in at a later date. You mentioned representations of Hera. And so if we focus, therefore, on arts, that feels like a nice going on to art, therefore. Are there any very striking or very regular, reoccurring ways that we see Hera depicted in art, in architecture across the ancient Greek world? in art, in architecture across the ancient Greek world?

So in terms of art, she doesn't have the kind of iconic attributes that some other gods have, but she does have a relatively regular depiction as a beautiful crowned woman. She wears this crown called the polos or the pyleion crown, which is sort of a gate tower crown, not so representational as like the later mural crowns of the city walls. In several places they're connected to agriculture. We know that both in representations of Hera and probably in her worship people wore these sort

of very tall polos crowns either made of reeds or grasses, sometimes interwoven with fruits. In Argos, they're made of a very particular plant called Asterion, the star grass, which is sacred to her. And we see these from the very earliest images of Hera that we have. She's often found on pottery, sometimes wearing the polos crown, sometimes not, often with Zeus. And she has various sorts of accoutrements, scepters, crowns, things representing royalty, a veil, things representing women's nature, marriage, those sorts of things. And she's hold shown holding a pomegranate symbolizing fertility we also find obviously with persephone different kind of fertility though right it's

because as you mentioned right at the start queen of the gods wife is use it sounds like hera is the goddess of various different things yeah and particularly related to women. So we find her in both a guise as a marriage goddess, but also everything around that. So we have images of her as the Parthenos, the maiden. So representing girls on the precipice of marriage. We find her with epithets like Gamaliel and Telia, these sorts of things, which all sort of roughly mean like protector of marriage, overseer of marriage. And we also find her as a protector of widows. So she really kind of goes through each of these stages of a woman's life related to marriage, we don't find her as a childbirth goddess, which is I think an interesting departure

from what we might think a marriage goddess should cover, but she doesn't. Do we have any idea why? It might be because her daughter, Elithiah, is the preeminent divinity of childbearing. But, I mean, there are lots of reasons why it could be. She does have fertility aspects, as we kind of mentioned, with the iconographic representation of the pomegranate,

but she doesn't really have mythically a good relationship with a lot of her own children. Her husband is a serial philanderer. There's a lot of reasons why other divinities, Demeter, for example, are more appropriate as mothering divinities. And we also find obviously Artemis as a mothering divinity as well, interestingly. Well, we could go through down so many different strands there, but let's focus in on Hera's children first of all. So who are Hera's children? Right. So Hera has several children.

Canonically, Hebe, who is the original cup bearer of the gods. She's a goddess of youth. She later becomes the wife of Heracles after his apotheosis. Ares is probably her favorite. As I said, Alathia, the goddess of childbirth, and Hephaestus, who in various traditions is either the son of Zeus or a parthenogenic child of Hera's alone. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in her pre-Greek form, she is also listed as the mother of the monster Typhon, who obviously later becomes one of Zeus's most ardent enemies, which is interesting, but that is a very particular thing. it's not a more regular to find that on gone medieval from history hits we're here to spoil you with the biggest names chingus khan the

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And look, I think a part of that is just because she's a product of the society that made her right this is a highly patriarchal society I mean we even find it in her own worship where as you know we said there are temples of Hera and then Zeus comes in and takes over those and in the mythology and her own history that is borne out as well. In terms of like the vindictiveness and the jealousy, like yeah, she does kind of go after Heracles, the son of Zeus. Obviously, she plays a really big role in the fact that Leto cannot give birth to Apollo and Artemis. So who was Leto? Tell us through this story. Leto was a minor goddess who bore two children to Zeus, the twins Apollo and Artemis. And Hera made it so that she

would not be able to give birth on any land that was fixed, essentially. At that time, Delos, which would become the sacred island, sacred to Apollo, was kind of just floating around. She managed to give birth to the twins there. But this was all because Hera had asked her daughter to withhold the gift of childbirth from Leto. She was labouring and would not be able to birth those children. Goodness. Yeah, it sounds awful.

This seems one of the epitome stories of this ire, this vengeance of Hera, but this is just one example, as you say. I'm guessing there are several other examples. We won't go to Heracles just yet, but there are other examples alongside Leto too, aren't there? Yeah, so probably one of the most famous is Semele, the mortal mother of Dionysus, who is in love with Zeus, knows that her lover is Zeus. And Hera convinces her to ask Zeus, show him to her in his true form, which obviously being a mortal, she can't handle and she's killed.

But not before Zeus takes the still gestating Dionysus and sews him into his own thigh, which is why Dionysus is then twice born. I mean, she definitely does get a deserved wrap as a vengeful goddess. But I also feel a bit for her because she can't really take all of this anger out on Zeus if she were to do that then it would backfire very badly on her he is the king of the gods he is the supreme ruler and this is sort of what I meant when I said like I think she's just a product of the society that made her this highly patriarchal. Even though she is the second highest, she still has to be subservient. So it sounds like there is more to the story of Hera's bitterness

than just her being a scorned woman, basically. Yeah, I think so. I think we also have to remember that the people who are writing these stories were elite men and the nature of storytelling is that if everybody just lives happily ever after, that's not a very good story. Quick question from me. I don't know the answer.

This is all quick tangent. Obviously, Zeus takes lots of lovers. Do we know if Hera takes any lovers? No, she doesn't, apart from Zeus. She does have, in most versions, she does have a child without Zeus, Hephaestus, but as I mentioned, that's through Parthenogenesis. It is divine conception, as it were. It's interesting to highlight that. Well, let's go on to Heracles then because this is a great story.

This is a really interesting story with Heracles and Hera. And Ellie, I want you to go into this in as much detail as you want. But first of all, why does Hera loathe Heracles so much? That's a really interesting question. Because he is the child of Zeus, really. And because Zeus had kind of destined great things for him and she just feels bitter about it, I think it probably doesn't help that his name means glory of 12 labors is because zeus decrees that the next child born will become the king and she a hera asks her daughter to withhold the birth of heracles so eurystheus can be born he becomes king he's terrible king. He's weak and cowardly and all the things that a heroic king should not be. And after Heracles has, in a fit of madness brought on by Hera, killed his wife and children, he's sent to serve in Eurysthekles' court in penance

for the murder of his wife and children, and that's what kind of sets him off on these 12 labours. They're what he is punished to do, essentially. And she's involved in some of them. So she, for instance, the Nemean lion is the one who raises the lion. In some versions she makes him. So she just kind of at every stage tries to make it so that he fails. And then at the end, of course, he becomes an Olympian. He becomes a god and marries her daughter.

And we don't hear a lot about how she feels about that. It's an interesting kind of thought experiment to get into how that would affect this very vengeful, very impassioned goddess of marriage that her own daughter, the goddess of youth, has been given to this mortal come God who she absolutely loathes. I mean, absolutely loathes. Is there any attempt at reconciliation at all to try and fix, to heal these deep chasms between the two? Not in any of our, I guess what we would call like core sources.

Certainly not in any of the sources that are of the archaic, classical Hellenistic periods. We don't hear about it. But then that also like ties into the role of women in marriage, in the marriage of their daughters. They have no official say. That's not necessarily that no women ever get no say. You know, the ancient world is not a monolith and all that. get no say. You know, the ancient world is not a monolith and all that. But as a goddess of marriage, it is also her job to recognize that women are not the important negotiators of marriage contracts.

These are contracts that are made between fathers and future husbands. And so the contract is made between Zeus and Heracles, and she doesn't have a say in the same way that many women in the ancient world would never have a say about who marries their daughter. So that's so interesting, Ellie, even though she's the queen of the gods, of the Olympian gods, as you've hinted at just there and earlier, you can see in many aspects of Hera's story, of her mythology, this reflection of ancient Greek society of those who believed in this god, Hera. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is something that we find in all gods, really, because as Xenophanes tells us, men make gods in the image of men

as horses would make gods in the image of horses. You know, they reflect the society that makes them. And so you can sort of see a case where the authors of these stories, these elite men, would not be able to understand a society in which women have this kind of power over, say, the marriage contract of their daughter. And so that can't be reflected in their divinities and the stories about their divinities. And just before we move on to cults in the ancient Greek world, focusing on Hera, I've got a key word in my notes now that I'd love you to talk about quickly,

related to Hera, and that is the word peacocks. Now, what is this? Okay. Peacocks become sacred to Hera. This is a really interesting case of an iconographical attribution, a mythic attribution that happens late because peacocks are unknown in the Greek world until after Alexander's conquest of the nearest. Don't know about peacocks, yeah.

Indeed. And so this is also a story of Hera's jealousy about one of her priestesses, a woman named Io, who is reportedly very beautiful and Zeus falls in love with in that way that Zeus tends to fall in love with beautiful women, and he pursues her. And there are kind of a couple of different happenings around this, one where Hera turns her into a cow after she has been assaulted or seduced or whatever the case may be by Zeus and one before. She gets turned into a cow and put in Hera's sacred pasture, which is guarded by a man named, a giant I should

say, named Argus, who is covered in eyes. Eyes everywhere, all over his body. And so Zeus decides that he wants cow Io. He doesn't care that she's a cow now. He still wants her. And so he sends Hermes, who's famously a thief of castle and a proponent of trickery. And so he, Hermes, goes and steals Io. And in the course of this, Argus is killed and Hera, because this was one of her faithful servants, takes his eyes and places them into the tail of the peacock and that's why the

peacock has this fantastic tail with all these eyes in it and why the peacock becomes at that point sacred to Hera. So do you therefore see in the Hellenistic period, maybe in the Roman period as well, I don't know if it's transferred over to Juno, I don't know if you know as well either, do you therefore start seeing depictions of peacocks alongside depictions of Hera when place is sacred to Hera? Yeah. Do you? Yeah. Not loads and loads and certainly not as many as you find with Hera and other birds. She has a very long association with the cuckoo because Zeus disguises himself as a cuckoo to seduce her originally.

But, yeah, definitely we find her associated with peacocks. We find representations of peacocks. And, you know, that's one of the attributions that has really stuck around into modern pop culture. I'm not sure if you've noticed my pantheon of Playmobil, but the Playmobil Hera comes with a peacock. Really? Ah, I just see the crown as well there and the staff and everything they're

just describing it now uh and i see persephone we'll get on to persephone in due course too so that's really interesting and i think it's something to really highlight again as you mentioned earlier our sources original source literary sources we're looking at the gods such as hera are there other ways in which you see the evolution of hera almost as the greek period as that from the archaic periods the classical period to the hellenistic you see the evolution of Hera almost as the Greek period, as that from the archaic periods, the classical period to the Hellenistic period? The main evolution is sort of the one that we've already discussed, where she is this pre-indigenous agricultural goddess and then kind of becomes a part of the Greek pantheon. In terms of her role in worship, it doesn't change a lot.

I mean polytheistic societies are that. Gods can really be worshipped in any guise in any place as long as there is a reason to do so. And in most places Hera is a marriage goddess primarily. And that really reflects the importance of marriage, of legitimate marriage throughout the Greek world. I mean, throughout known ancient history. And so there isn't a lot of reason for her to change,

for her cults to evolve in ways that we find other cults, other divinities kind of evolving into other things. Because marriage is a staple part of... Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton.

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Yes. I know less about Juno. I know that she kind of does become a bit more associated with royalty, although that association is definitely still in the earlier period with Hera. although that association is definitely still in the earlier period with Hera. But as we get into this imperial period where that's far more important, from what I mean, I'm not a Roman historian.

I'll rein it back. I'll rein it back into the Kaskin and Archaic periods, Ellie. I mean, just before we really start wrapping up, are there any other particular myths of Hera or versions of myths that you find particularly fascinating that you'd love to tell us now? Can I tell you something that's not a myth? Go on then. Yeah, absolutely. Hera is one of the first divinities

that gets transported from mainland Greece into Italy and Sicily. And alongside the really important link between Hera and architecture, this is really taken in by the Southern Italian and Sicilian Greeks. This is why their temples are Doric and not Ionic. And in temples of Hera in Southern Italy, we start getting some of the really, really exciting innovations in temple design, including all of those very minute kind of visual trickery that we find epitomized in the Parthenon later. That all comes from the building of Hera's temples

and focused around her worship because she's so important and because all of temple architecture really we owe to the worship of Hera. All our earliest temples are temples of Hera, all our most innovative temples certainly in 7th, 6th and early 5th centuries are all temples of Hera. Are there any striking examples still standing from southern Italy, from Sicily? Is Paestum, is that one of them? Yes. Originally called Posidonia, named after Poseidon, although none of the three temples there are temples of Poseidon, there are two temples of Hera and one temple of Athena. That's actually the first place that we get the cigar-shaped columns, which later become

the bulge in the middle. columns, which later become the, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, okay. The bulge in the middle. Yes. Yeah. And that's what you're hinting at with the path on, you know, those elliptical tricks. But also things like the very slight curvature on the steps, all of those sorts of things were developed in temples of Hera originally. Interesting.

So if we've got all this great love and the importance, the significance of Hera for all of this early temple architecture, not just in Greece but in southern Italy as well, obviously we've got oracles of an oracle of Apollo, we've got an oracle of Zeus. Is that any oracle of Hera or is it more focused in on temples with her? No, it's really just focused. Originally she is a goddess that's worshipped in the home

and we find actually her second most prolific votive offerings are tiny ceramic homes, home temples. So she's always very much a goddess that is close to people. She's not kind of a celestial divinity. She's really always a divinity, which is close in the home to people, to the earth as a goddess of fertility. A lot of her temples are in plains.

A lot of the places that she is the patron divinity of are heavily agricultural grain-based societies. Ellie, this has been absolutely fascinating. One of my last questions was, would she ever be as revered as Zeus? But from what you were saying, it's so interesting how before, when it's the indigenous goddess, she is more revered than Zeus and how that changes later on. So there is a period when Hera is more revered than Zeus.

Yeah, absolutely. And I can really understand how early interpreters, early scholars of like the 18th, 19th centuries thought that she was the most important indigenous divinity. And certainly that is borne out in the archaeological evidence that we have, particularly, you know, for pre-literate archaeological societies. So, yeah, she definitely was and she always played a really, really important role even after sort of this patriarchal system was placed on top of her and she became subservient to Zeus because she's the protector of marriage and that's

so important for Greek society. Ellie, this has been a fantastic chat. And it just goes me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Ellie Mackin-Roberts explaining all things hero. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Ellie for being such a brilliant contributor. Now, a few other people to mention here,

the real heroes who made this special episode a reality. Of course, first and foremost, we must mention the lass who has worked tirelessly on this episode over the past few weeks, the brilliant lady, the brilliant senior producer

of the ancients, that is the one and only Elena Guthrie. The scriptwriter of this episode, a brilliant senior producer of The Ancients, that is the one and only Elena Guthrie. The scriptwriter of this episode, a brilliant script, was written by Andrew Hulse. The voice actor was Nicola Woolley. Thank you, Nicola. And of course, Annie Colo, the assistant producer who alongside Elena, they are the key, the key figures of The Ancients team who do all of the heavy lifting all of the hard work without them the ancients would not be here today so i'm always incredibly grateful to both annie and elena so thank you both and of course as mentioned thank you to andrew and nicola too now when is the next episode of the greek gods and goddesses coming out well it will be coming

out in the next few weeks and in the next episode we're going to be exploring the god of feistus the god of fire but also this very crafty god too as you're going to hear in a few weeks time so if you haven't already please hit subscribe share the words share the love of the ancients as much as you can as much as you wish and if you'd be kind enough also leave us a lovely rating on apple podcasts spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to grow this podcast even greater heights but that's enough from me and i'll see you in the next episode