Hera and the Seduction of Zeus

Author: Homer

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

In the tenth year of the Trojan War, the Greek army lays siege to the city of Troy. While the gods have been heavily involved in the battle up to this point, the king of all gods, Zeus, has declared that they are no longer allowed to visit the battlefield. The goddess Hera, however, is a passionate supporter of the Greeks. Years before, the Trojan prince Paris had judged a beauty contest between Hera and two other goddesses and ultimately selected Aphrodite as the most beautiful of all the deities. To bribe him, Aphrodite had offered the most beautiful woman in the world as his bride. Paris seduces the woman, the Greek queen Helen, and takes her to Troy, beginning the decade-long war. Years later, Hera’s pride is still injured by this contest, and so she does everything she can to take vengeance on Paris and his city.

After Zeus forbids the gods from interfering in the battle, Hera quickly devises a plan. She looks out across the land and sees Zeus, her husband and brother, relaxing on Mount Ida, a mountain near the city of Troy. She realizes that if she makes herself beautiful enough, she might seduce him and thereby exhaust him and lure him into sleep.

Hera dresses in her fanciest clothing but decides she needs something extra to ensure that the seduction will work. She then visits Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty and a supporter of Troy, and asks for some of the unparalleled beauty and charm that the goddess possesses. Speaking sweetly to Aphrodite and behaving as if they are allies, Hera explains that she is headed to visit the Titans, gods who had warred with the Olympians in the distant past, and seeks to mend the rift that had developed between them. Aphrodite agrees that this a wonderful plan and quickly gives Hera a breastband that radiates with longing and lust.

Hera puts on the enchanted breastband and speeds across the earth, making sure to cross Mount Ida. Zeus sees her and is overcome with longing for his wife. He asks Hera to stay with him, but Hera tells him she is going to visit the Titan Okeanos, feigning indifference to her husband. Zeus, however, continues to urge her, and after only a moment Hera agrees to lie down with him. When Zeus soon falls asleep, Hera’s plan is proven a success, and she is able to direct her attention back to the Trojan War.

SIGNIFICANCE

Hera’s seduction of Zeus takes place in the second half of the epic poem the Iliad, believed to have been composed by the Greek poet Homer in the eighth century BCE. Chronicling the final days of the Trojan War, the epic is a narrative of heroes and of gods, of grand victories and tragic defeats, and has remained influential in Western literature through the present day.

Although it takes place during the ongoing war, the story of Hera’s seduction of Zeus is fairly far removed from the battle itself. While Hera schemes in order to affect the outcome of the war, her actual plotting and motivations take place in the realm of Olympus, far away from the mortals. Within the Iliad, the gods are often portrayed in parallel to the humans, behaving with just as much selfishness and pettiness in their motivations. Hera goes out of her way to influence the war, for instance, but in reality she truly hopes not to defeat the Trojans but to shame Aphrodite, who had bested her in a beauty contest. Likewise, she pretends throughout the myth that she is traveling to the ends of the world in order to heal the rift between the Olympian gods and the Titans, which formed during the legendary war known as the Titanomachy. This war was one of the most violent and significant events in Greek mythological history, establishing the pantheon and placing Zeus in power. For Hera to mend the division it caused would be a great and noble deed. Her real intention, however, is incredibly shallow; she wants to look pretty in order to seduce her husband and exhaust him so she can secretly aid the Greeks while he is asleep.

Hera is not the only god to come off poorly in this myth. Aphrodite, who knows that Hera despises her after the beauty contest, falls for the goddess’s ploy with hardly any convincing, her gullibility becoming her most recognizable trait. Zeus, likewise, is supposedly the king of the gods and the mightiest of all the deities, yet he spends the entirety of the myth relaxing on Mount Ida. A jealous and shallow Hera, a lethargic and wanton Zeus, and a naïve Aphrodite, then, are the main players in this myth. The enormity of the greatest mythological war behind them and the reality of the decade-long bloodshed of the Trojan War beneath them, the deities of ancient Greece can do nothing more than fuss over romance and superficial beauty. Perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of the myth is not their behavior, however, but the fact that their own trifling actions come to define the course of the war and, ultimately, of human history. Homer’s narrative is entertaining and engaging, but moments such as Hera’s seduction of Zeus add an additional depth to that amusement, suggesting a dark tension between the desperate intentions of humanity and the uncaring whims of the gods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Forman, Robert J. “Iliad.” Magill’s Survey of World Literature. Ed. Steven G. Kellman. Rev. ed. Vol. 3. Pasadena: Salem, 2009. 1207–9. Print.

Knox, Bernard. “Introduction.” The Iliad. New York: Penguin, 1991. 3–64. Print.

“Stories of Hera.” Theoi Greek Mythology. Aaron J. Atsma, 2011. Web. 5 June 2013.

Weigel, James, Jr. “Iliad.” Masterplots. Ed Laurence W. Mazzeno. 4th ed. Vol. 5. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 2808–12. Print.

Willcock, Malcolm M. A Companion to the Iliad. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.