Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,2): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits) (Cambridge, 1940)

The Hieros Gdmos io45

And on billon coins of Alexandreia struck by Nero (fig. 840)1 Hera Argeia is
conspicuously veiled.

These considerations, despite the doubts of M. P. Nilsson2, do raise a
certain presumption that the marriage of Hera was duly celebrated at Argos,
though they do not of course prove that the original consort of the goddess
was Zeus3. But that as early as the fifth century B.C. Zeus had come to be
regarded as the rightful partner of the Argive Hera, and that their union was
commemorated by the ritual of a hieros gdmos, seems to me a reasonable
inference from the final scene of Aristophanes' Birds*.

At this point the argument can be strengthened by taking into account
Roman as well as Greek evidence. Apuleius in his Metamorphoses makes
Psyche pray to Hera as follows: 'O sister and wife of mighty Zeus, whether
thou abidest in the ancient temple of Samos, which alone can boast thy birth,
thine infant cries, and thy nursing, or hauntest thy blissful seat in lofty Carthage,
which worships thee as a virgin carried up to heaven on a lion5, or presidest
over the famous walls of the Argives near the banks of the Inachos, which tells
of thee as already the bride of the Thunderer and the queen of the gods6,' etc.
etc. Argos is here chosen as a typical centre for the cult of Hera conceived as
the bride of Zeus. The same conception underlies the Agamemnon of Seneca,
in which a chorus of Mycenaean women invokes Hera thus:

Come, consort of the mighty sceptre, come,

Hera the Queen,—
All we that in Mykenai have our home

On thee must lean".

Later in the play Agamemnon on reaching his palace exclaims:
O father, hurler of the cruel bolt,
Driver of clouds, sovereign of stars and lands,
To whom the conqueror brings his triumph-spoils,
And thou too, sister of an almighty lord,
Argolic Hera, gladly will I serve you
With gifts of Araby and suppliant entrails 8.

1 Brit. Mils. Cat. Coins Alexandria p. 17 nos. 132, 133 pi. 1 ( = my fig. 840), 134 f.,
Hunter Cat. Coins iii. 416 nos. 114 pi. 85, 23, 115 f., J. G. Milne Catalogue of Alexan-
drian Coins Oxford 1933 p. 8 nos. 266 f., 281—284, 291, 297.

2 Nilsson Gr. Feste p. 44. He notes, however, that the marriage of Hebe and
Herakles, a relief on a silver altar in the Heraion (Paus. 2. 17. 6), was perhaps viewed
as a parallel to the marriage of Hera and Zeus. And he accepts as probable the suggestion
of W. H. Roscher Juno und Hera Leipzig 1875 p. 33 that the wedding of Demetrios
Poliorketes, when agonothe'tes at the Heraia, with Deidameia, daughter of the Molottian
king Aiakides and sister of Pyrrhos (Plout. v. Demetr. 25), was designed in imitation of
the hierbs gdmos.

3 I am hinting at Herakles, on whose relations to Hera I have said my say in the
Class. Rev. 1906 xx. 371 ff.

4 See supra p. 58 ff.

5 W. H. Roscher in his Lex. Myth. ii. 612 ff., F. Cumont in Pauly—Wissowa Real-
Enc. iii. 1247—1250, H. Frere ' Sur le culte de Caelestis' in the Rev. Arch. 1907 ii.
21—35, A. von Domaszewski Abhandlungen zur romischen Religion Leipzig—Berlin
1909 pp. 148—150 ('Virgo Caelestis'). Cp. supra ii. 68 n. 2, 869 n. o, iii. 834.

6 Apul. met. 6. 4 sive prope ripas Inachi, qui te iam nuptam Tonantis et reginam
deorum memorat, inclitis Argivorum praesides moenibus.

7 Sen. Ag. 348 ff. 8 Sen. Ag. 839 ff.