Maybe we just don’t get what Zeus and Hera have got going on.
I mean, every relationship is complicated, right?
And sure, centuries of mythology and fighting and trickery and murder don’t exactly paint
a flattering picture, but maybe we’re the assholes here.
Maybe we just can’t judge a two-thousand-year-old highly symbolic dynamic between the all-powerful
lord of the skies and guardian of hospitality and the goddess of women and family by the
same metric we’d use to deem a bestie’s new boyfriend “a serious red flag”.
Zeus and Hera are fascinating characters, but they’re also gods, and that means their
actions and relationships have meaning beyond the surface level.
Hera punishing Zeus’s lovers slash victims for Zeus’s infidelity is, of course, a victim-blaming
dick move, but Hera is more than a garden-variety woman scorned - she’s the goddess of marriage
and family.
Of course she punishes people who break their vows, no matter the context.
And why doesn’t she punish Zeus?
Well… in-lore it’s because Zeus is more powerful than her, but the practical reason
is because Zeus is not a person.
Zeus is a story and a god.
Hera’s vengeance on infidelity was a social pressure on the people of Ancient Greece.
Stay faithful to your spouses and respect the bonds of marriage or Hera would strike
you down for defying her domain.
Be a good host and keep your guests safe because violating the laws of hospitality would bring
down Zeus’s wrath on your head.
When we retell myths it’s easy to focus on the gods as characters - because they are.
But it’s easy to forget that they were also more than that.
We can get hung up on the “canon” of the mythology not holding together, but that means
we’re approaching the mythology with the wrong set of expectations.
We read a novel or watch a movie expecting the story to hold together because that’s
the point of those stories, but the point of the mythology was not to tell a set of
stories that was internally consistent - it was to establish who the gods were and what
they meant to the people of Ancient Greece.
So we can judge Zeus and Hera’s wacky red-flag bonanza all we want - and we should, because
it’s hilarious - but we shouldn’t forget that those stories existed for a reason.
In fact, today we’re gonna be talking about a story that both ties directly into a real
historical celebration and paints Zeus and Hera’s relationship as more mutually affectionate
than average.
Don’t get too excited, it’s still a pretty low bar.
Now this story comes to us from Pausanias’s Descriptions Of Greece, and the story begins
like so many do - with Hera pissed off at Zeus.
The actual reason is unspecified - feel free to spin a wheel on that one - but this time
she’s more than just cranky, she seems actually willing to break things off.
She dips out of Olympus and crashes on the island of Euboea to sulk, and nothing Zeus
says can change her mind.
Faced once again with the terrifying specter of the consequences of his own actions, Zeus
seeks help from King Cithaeron, a mountain god with a startling amount of experience
in romantic shenanigans - one can only assume he’s seen his share of lovesick young people
looking for picturesque environments to wax poetic in.
Cithaeron suggests that Zeus can win Hera back with a wacky hijink by playing to her
jealous nature, and proposes a scheme where they spread rumors of Zeus’s upcoming marriage
to Plataea, daughter of Asopus and granddaughter of Cithaeron.
For the record, bonus fun fact, all of these people share names with major local geographical
features in Boeotia - Cithaeron is a mountain range, Asopus is a river and Plataea is the
name of the whole city, so this is most likely a situation where all parties involved are
gods, nymphs and other anthropomorphic personifications of the kingdom and its natural environs.
Anyway, Cithaeron suggests they really sell the bit with a celebration parade where Zeus
can show off his new bride.
True to form, when Hera hears about Zeus gallivanting around with some brand new squeeze she gets
in a right twist about it and flies up to Boeotia in a furious rage, finding Zeus heading
a lavish bridal procession with someone dolled up in a beautiful wedding dress.
Hera storms the procession in all her glory and rips the dress away - finding nothing
underneath but a wooden statue.
Hera is shocked to learn that, at least in this specific case, Zeus genuinely only had
eyes for her, and in Boeotia they say that the heart of the queen grew three sizes that
day.
Zeus and Hera reconcile in a reunion so beautiful it was commemorated in the Daedala festival
for centuries, where wooden statues were carved from sacred oaks and carried through marriage
ceremonies up the peak of Mount Cithaeron, where a huge offering to Hera and Zeus was
prepared and burned to celebrate the one time their relationship actually kind of made sense.
So remember, folks, if you and your partner are having a hard time, they’re gonna absolutely
love it if you replace them with a doll.