horrific violence against men: context for Hera’s deception of Zeus
The goddesses and gods in the ancient Homeric Iliad are as deceitful and violent as humans. Hera, the powerful and demonically raging queen-goddess, supported Greek men besieging Troy. Her spouse Zeus, in contrast, aided Trojan men attacking Greek men. Zeus could scarcely control with words Hera’s anger, and he was inferior to her in guile. She deceived and seduced him in order to help Greek men kill Trojan men. Passionate entanglements of ancient Greek divinities, both female and male, push forward the Iliad’s horrific violence against men. Even now, under a much different polytheistic, intersectional religion, many still believe that men don’t deserve mercy.
The god Poseidon, Hera’s brother, intervened directly in the fighting to help Greek men attack Trojan men. He rallied Greek men and led them into battle against Trojan men:
So urging, across the plain Poseidon swept, shouting mightily, as loud as the cry of nine-thousand men, or ten-thousand men, in battle as they join in the war god’s strife. So mighty did Lord Poseidon, Shaker of Earth, shout from his lungs that in the heart of every Greek man he roused great strength to war and to fight without ceasing.
From the high peak of Olympus, Hera on her golden throne looked down with joy at her brother Poseidon leading Greek men in killing Trojan men. That’s grotesque.[2] Men’s deaths should be cause for sadness and regret, not joy.
From her position of divine privilege, Hera thought only of her side winning. She would do whatever she could to continue the killing of Trojan men:
Zeus was then seated at the topmost peak of Ida with its many springs. Hera saw him, and he was hateful to her in her heart.
Hera felt hate toward her husband Zeus because he would help fleeing Trojan men. Preparing to attack him in his vulnerability, she went to her luxurious bedroom and anointed her lovely body with the soft, rich fragrance of ambrosial oil. Then she armed herself further:
When she had thus anointed her beautiful body, she combed her hair. With her hands she arranged the shining, beautiful, ambrosial curls streaming from her immortal head. Then she clothed herself in an ambrosial robe that Athena had crafted and smoothed for her, a robe with many embroideries. At her breast she pinned the robe with brooches of gold. She circled her waist with a belt of a hundred tassels and in her pierced ears she put earrings having triple drops of fine clusters, shining full of grace. With a covering veil, the beautiful goddess veiled herself, with a bright, beautiful veil, glistening as white as the sun. Beneath her shining feet she bound beautiful sandals.
As beautiful, young immortals, Hera and Zeus had embraced in bed “without their parents knowing {φίλους λήθοντε τοκῆας}.” To recreate that passion, Hera now was dressed to kill. Many men yearn to die with a smile on their face. Men lives should matter more.
Hera knew what she wanted and how to get it. She went to the goddess Aphrodite and said:
Give now to me love and yearning, by which you subdue all mortal and immortal men.
Hera mendaciously claimed that she sought to promote peacemaking between her foster father Oceanus and her foster mother Tethys. Mired in endless strife, that couple had sunk into a sexless marriage. Aphrodite readily agreed to help Hera, “for you sleep in the arms of Zeus, the mightiest {Ζηνὸς γὰρ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἐν ἀγκοίνῃσιν ἰαύεις}”:
So Aphrodite spoke and unbound from her breasts an embroidered lappet, inlaid, fashioned with all manners of allurements. It held love and desire and seductive talk, such as steals the senses of even wise men.
Hera, truly the mightiest, tucked this lappet between her own breasts. She thus was fully armed to overwhelm Zeus.
Hera went to the god Sleep, the brother of Death. She needed his help to carry out her conspiracy against her husband:
Lull to sleep for me Zeus’s gleaming eyes beneath his brows as soon as I have laid beside him in love. I will in turn give you a beautiful throne, forever enduring, one of gold. Hephaestus, my own son, he with both legs crippled, will skillfully make it and set beneath a stool for feet. You may rest your shining feet on that when you drink your wine.
Sleep hesitated. In the past, he put Zeus asleep to help Hera assail her step-son Heracles. But Zeus awoke and furiously attacked both Sleep and Hera. She nonetheless was undaunted. A woman who trafficked in women, Hera sweetened her offer to Sleep:
Come now, do it, and I’ll give you one of the youthful Graces to marry and be called your wife — Pasithea, for whom you have been longing all your days.
Women themselves abuse women. Thrilled with the thought of embracing Pasithea, Sleep immediately agreed. He thus went with Hera to waylay Zeus on Mount Ida.
As soon as Zeus saw Hera, lust for her enveloped his heart. Hera mendaciously claimed that she was going to her foster parents to urge them to put aside their strife and come them together in conjugal embrace. Zeus begged her not to hurry. As if seeking to enact the pattern of Hera’s story about her foster parents, Zeus suggested that they bed down and lose themselves in love. Zeus was so lacking in guile that he described his desire for Hera as now exceeding what he felt in his numerous extra-marital affairs that produced numerous extra-marital children:
Never before has such desire for a goddess or mortal woman poured around and overpowered the heart within my breast, not even when I was seized with love for Ixion’s wife, who gave birth to Peirithous, peer of gods in counsel, nor when I loved lovely ankled Danaë, Akrisios’s daughter, who gave birth to Perseus, preeminent above all warriors, nor when I loved far-famed Phoenix’s daughter, who gave birth to Minos and godlike Rhadamanthys, nor when I loved Semele, nor when I loved Alcmene in Thebes, who gave birth to my son Heracles the stout-hearted, and Semele gave birth to Dionysus, the joy of mortals, nor when I loved Demeter, the fair-haired queen, nor when I loved the glorious Leto, nor yet so much you as now I love you, for so has sweet desire seized me.
That’s an obtuse way for Zeus to flatter his wife Hera. She hated his strong, independent sexuality. She persecuted the illustrious children he had with other women. Although he was nominal head god in charge of the cosmos, Zeus lacked Hera’s relational sophistication.
In order to advance her conspiracy, Hera pretended not to be insulted by Zeus’s extra-marital affairs. She told him that she was too modest to have sex on Ida’s heights, where others might observe their intercourse. Of course, there’s nothing shameful about a wife having sex with her husband. Zeus promised to envelop their conjugal intercourse with a golden cloud. That happened with the now nearly unimaginable erotica of archaic Greece:
With those words Cronos’s son Zeus clasped his wife in his arms. Beneath them the bright earth made fresh-sprung grass and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth, thick and soft, that bedded them on the ground. There they lay, clothed about with a beautiful golden cloud. Glistening dew drops fell from it.
Zeus slept with Hera in his arms. Men so dream in love.
Hera’s conspiracy against Zeus prompted horrific violence against men. The god Sleep immediately rushed to the Greek warships. He urged Poseidon:
Now, Poseidon, earnestly help Greek men and give them glory, though for a little time while still sleeps Zeus, since over him I have blanketed soft slumber. Hera has tricked him to sleep with her in love.
Poseidon went to the front line and ordered Greek men to attack Trojan men. They obeyed that bloodthirsty god:
Not so loudly roars the sea’s surf on the shore, driven up from the deep by the dread blast of the North Wind, nor so loud is the roar of blazing fire when it leaps to burn the forest in mountain glades, nor so loudly does the wind shriek among the high crests of the oaks, when the wind roars the loudest in its rage — as was the sound of Trojan men and Greek men screaming in attacking each other.
The Greek Telamonian Ajax speared the Trojan Archelochus in the neck. Archelochus fell dead. Archelochus’s brother Acamas then killed the Greek ally Promachus, son of Alegenor. The Greek Peneleos in turn charged Acamas, who ran away. Peneleos then speared the Trojan Ilioneus:
He struck this man beneath the brow at the root of the eye and drove out the eyeball. The spear went completely through the eye-socket and the neck’s nape. Ilioneus sank down backward, stretching out both hands. Peneleos, drawing his sharp sword, struck mid-neck and cut to the ground the man’s head with its helmet on. The mighty spear nonetheless remained in his eye. Lifting the spear high, like the head of a poppy, Ilioneus’s head he displayed to the Trojans and vaunted over it: “Trojans, do me a favor and tell Ilioneus’s dear father and mother to weep for him in their halls, since the wife of Promachus, son of Alegenor, also will not rejoice at the arrival of her dear husband when we Greek sons return in ships from the land of Troy.”
Sex need not be associated with violence. Hera’s sexual deception of Zeus, however, is deeply enmeshed in horrific violence against men. Mothers and fathers, wives and sisters and brothers, all should notice and care about violence against men.[8]
Subsequent quotes above are similarly sourced. They are Iliad 14.157-8 (Zeus was then seated at the topmost peak of Ida…), 14.175-86 (When she had thus anointed her beautiful body…), 14.296 (without their parents knowing), 14.198-9 (Give now to me love and yearning…), 14.213 (for you sleep in the arms of Zeus, the mightiest), 14.214-7 (So Aphrodite spoke and unbound from her breasts…), 14.236-41 (Lull to sleep for me Zeus’s gleaming eyes…), 14.267-9 (Come now, do it, and I’ll give you one of the youthful Graces…), 14.315-28 (Never before has such desire for a goddess or mortal woman…), 14.346-51 (With those words Cronos’s son Zeus clasped his wife in his arms…), 14.357-60 (Now, Poseidon, earnestly help Greek men…), 14.357-60 (Not so loudly roars the sea’s surf…), 14.493-505 (He struck this man beneath the brow…).
[2] Hera is highly significant in the Iliad:
her unremitting lust for vengeance provides the divine model for the inhuman excesses of the final battle books {of the Iliad}. … Hera is prominent as a savage goddess who, in Zeus’ words ({Iliad} 4.34ff), lusts to “raw-eat” the flesh of Priam and of all Troy. This Hera is, finally, to triumph over the divine pity which Zeus comes to represent. The lust for raw-eating or omophagia, applied to her in Book 4, is the epic’s primary image of moral degeneration, just as a meal roasted and shared with others is the primary metaphor for the best of human behavior.
O’Brien (1990) p. 106. Zeus berated the war-god Ares as being like his mother Hera:
You have the unbearable, overpowering rage of your mother, Hera. With my words I can scarcely control her.
Iliad 5.892-3. Zeus calls Hera “incorrigible {ἀμήχανε}.” Iliad 15.14. Exasperated with her manipulation and abuse of him, Zeus tells her, “surely there’s no more bitch-like one than you {οὐ σέο κύντερον ἄλλο}.” Iliad 8.483.
Hera isn’t subordinate to Zeus. Although they have different personalities, Hera and Zeus are equal partners and equal in honor. Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) pp. 1-4, 21-2. Hera and Zeus have a “productive antagonism {antagonisme productif}.” Pironti (2017) p. 83. Hera is “Zeus’ staunch competitor for influence and power.” McCall (2013) p. 35. The modern myth of ancient Greek patriarchy has grossly distorted understanding of Hera:
Hera is the most under-appreciated deity in the pantheon of Homer’s Iliad. Inseminating mortals with thoughts and understanding the secret plans of Zeus, Hera proves to be a goddess of the mind. Hera’s characteristic sphere of action is the phrénes, the realm of physiological, emotional, and intellectual activity. Hera’s own creative vision enlarges the imaginative scope of the epic – for her noetic mode of seeing brings unity to what is otherwise disparate and heterogeneous, including the community of gods themselves. In effect, Homer’s Hera solves the political riddle of Hesiod’s Theogony and thus stabilizes the Olympian regime.
[4] Hera and Zeus embraced on a meadow filled with flowers: “this is a youthful, secret, and extremely eroticised union.” Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) p. 34. The imagery evokes the life-giving potential of men’s sexuality:
With the cloud to cover them, the earth, unasked, throws up a carpet of spring flowers beneath the lovers, as if inspired by their divine potency and fecundated by the gleaming dew that drips down; this is a bold phrase, since we are not told outright that the dew comes from the cloud!
Ancient adherents of traditional Greco-Roman religion disparaged Hera’s deception of Zeus in the Iliad. Arguing that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be banned from the ideal city, Plato regarded the story of Hera’s deception of Zeus as not “conducive to being under self-control {ἐπιτήδειον εἶναι πρὸς ἐγκράτειαν ἑαυτοῦ}.” Plato, Republic 3.390b. Plato’s teacher Socrates similarly sought to suppress discussion of castration culture.
Underscoring men’s vulnerable position in relation to women, Plutarch objected to Hera overly beautifying herself:
when she picks up those gold brooches and finely wrought earrings, and, lastly, turns to the witchery of Aphroditê’s magic band, it is plainly a case of overdoing things and of wanton conduct unbecoming to a wife.
[5] Zeus himself complained bitterly of Hera’s deceptions. After recounting his fury at her guileful persecution of his extra-marital son Heracles, Zeus told Hera:
I remind you again of these matters, so that you will cease your deceptions. Don’t think that you will be protected by love-making in bed with me, as when you came from among the gods and deceived me.
[7] While showing no gendered concern for horrific violence against men, modern scholars have interpreted the Iliad with anachronistic, tendentious language of extreme violence. A peer-reviewed, scholarly article tendentiously and absurdly depicted Hera as a wife abused into compliance to her husband. This article claimed that “a paramount aspect of the relationship between Zeus and Hera” is “terrorism by physical abuse on the part of the husband and the compliant surrender of the wife.” Synodinou (1987) p. 22. Cf. e.g. O’Brien (1990), Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) pp. 1-4, 21-2, and Ali (2015).
Hera participated in a conspiracy to overthrow Zeus, the nominal head god in charge of the cosmos. Iliad 1.396-412. Hera’s deception of Zeus sexually is plausibly interpreted as another instance of treason:
Hera poses a challenge to Zeus and his ‘plan’, one that has undertones of the succession motif with all its entailed violence and destruction.
Garcia (2013) p. 205. Treason throughout history has typically entailed harsh punishment. Zeus scarcely punishes Hera for her attempted treason. Zeus’s physical threats against Hera have much less effect than the horrific violence against men in the Iliad.
In her introductory essay to her translation of the Iliad, Wilson describes women captured in war as enslaved and raped. Both Achilles and Agamemnon are thus an “enslaving rapist” in relation to Briseis. Wilson (2023) p. xlviii. The Iliad text itself provides no evidence that Achilles and Agamemnon treated Briseis worse than they did men who were subordinate to them. Achilles in his emotional simplicity seems to have been affectionately attached to Briseis. Moreover, being enslaved and raped is a grotesquely misleading characterization of Helen’s status in relation to Paris. More generally, captive women such as Ausonius’s Bissula had extensive freedom, high status, and high welfare, especially relative to men brutally killed in war. The relation of classical Arabic caliphs to their slave-girls provides more insight into captured women in the Iliad than does modern ideas of women enslaved and raped. Such violent language invokes oppressive, sexist stereotypes of rape, and supports vastly gender-disproportionate incarceration of men.
[8] Scholars haven’t adequately appreciated the significance of Hera’s deception of Zeus in the context of epic violence against men in Iliad 14. Ancient scholars labeled this story “the deception of Zeus {Dios apate / Διὸς ἀπάτη}.” Janko (1994) p. 149. They thus elided Hera, the vitally significant actor who deserves blame for her deception of Zeus. A leading modern scholarly commentary on the Iliad states:
The Deception of Zeus is a bold, brilliant, graceful, sensuous and above all amusing virtuoso performance, wherein Homer parades his mastery of the other types of epic composition in his repertoire. Its merits have made this episode all the more offensive to those, from Xenophanes and Plato (Rep. 3.390c) onward, who do not expect gods to take part in a bedroom farce. Many of the ancients tried to explain it as an allegory… .
Janko (1994) p. 168. In its context of epic violence against men, Hera’s deception of Zeus is much more significant than merely “bedroom farce.” A scholar without any apparent concern for gender observed:
Thus the despair of the heroic generals in the first scene of book 14 and the cruel deaths in battle of brave warriors in the third episode of that book are powerful indications of the pathos of the human condition; and what makes that pathos especially poignant and unbearable is the fact that while men are dying so pitifully, Hera and Zeus, without a thought or care for the deep distress of humanity, enjoy a romantic mountain top tryst amid all the pleasurable trappings of lust and seduction.
Golden (1989) p. 8. The pathos and distress that provides the context for Hera’s deception of Zeus particularly affects men. That pathos and distress poignantly indicates gender injustice that men endure with little social concern.
Clement, P. A. and H. B. Hoffleit, ed. and trans. 1969. Plutarch. Moralia, Volume VIII: Table-Talk, Books 1-6. Loeb Classical Library 424. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Murray, A. T., trans. Revised by William F. Wyatt. 1924. Homer. Iliad. Loeb Classical Library 170 and 171. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate source for Murray’s translation.
O’Brien, Joan. 1990. “Homer’s Savage Hera.” The Classical Journal. 86(2): 105–25.
Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane, Gabriella Pironti, Raymond Geuss. 2022. The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse. Classical Scholarship in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Originally published in 2016 as Héra de Zeus (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Review by Patricia Johnston.
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