Hera and marriage

Hera often receives the cult title Teleia (the Fulfilled) in reference to her status as an archetypal bride and consort. In Greek culture, marriage and motherhood were the only acceptable goals for most women, and while Hera is not an enthusiastic mother in myth, we have seen that she functions as a nurturing goddess in some cults. Myths of Hera often illustrate the socially sanctioned status of the legitimate wife. The “marriage month” Gamelion, which appeared in many city calendars and involved sacrifices to Hera, was an auspicious time for weddings. Her union with Zeus was celebrated in the villages of Attica during the minor festival of Hieros Gamos (Sacred Marriage), while Zeus Teleios and Hera Teleia are invoked by Athenian poets in contexts that have to do with marriage.19

In Boiotian Plataiai, the site of a major Hera festival, the temple contained two statues of the goddess. One was called Hera Nympheuomene (Led as a Bride) referring to the marriage procession, and the other was Hera Teleia. The goddess’ festival, the Daidala, was celebrated every four (or six) years. According to Pausanias’ account (9.2.5-3.4), this involved the felling of an oak tree selected when the Plataians set out food for the crows in a sacred grove. The first tree the birds settled in was cut and fashioned into a crude statue called Daidala. At much longer intervals of sixty years, the festival called the Great Daidala took place. Unlike the annual observance, this involved the participation of cities all over Boiotia, each of whom contributed a cow and a bull. One of the wooden figures produced at the quadrennial festival was dressed as a bride and ceremoniously conducted in a cart from the river Asopos up to the peak of Mt. Kithairon. There, along with the other wooden figures and the sacrificial animals, it was burnt in a huge bonfire on the altar.20

The myth that explained the origin of this custom told how Zeus had quarreled with Hera, who “hid herself away” in the area of Mt. Kithairon. On the advice of a local king, Zeus devised a method to find and reconcile her: he pretended to marry a rival, the oaken statue. Hera and the outraged matrons of Plataiai disrupted the wedding procession, only to discover that the bride was a wooden image. Amused at the trick, Hera nevertheless insisted on the burning of the false rival. In the historical period, the festival was understood to commemorate the reconciliation of Zeus and Hera, and was therefore a celebration of divine and human marriage. Both the images in Hera’s temple, Nympheuomene and Teleia, refer to aspects of Hera’s concern with legitimate, socially sanctioned unions, and the myth likewise stresses how Hera and the women of Plataiai jealously protected their prerogatives as wives in a culture that considered extramarital sex for men normal, yet took seriously the rule that a man must have only one wife. Otherwise, issues of social status and inheritance could become muddied.

On the other hand, the festival seems to incorporate elements that predate the myth of Hera’s feminine jealousy, and point to the worship of an independently powerful goddess. Zeus has no place in the ritual itself, which seems to be akin to other sacred log processions attested in Boiotia and elsewhere, such as the Daphnephoria (Carrying the Laurel). Sacrifices on mountain peaks were characteristic of Minoan religion, and a shrine known as the Daidaleion is attested from Mycenaean Knossos. Hera’s cult, with its marital preoccupations, may have been superimposed upon rituals that were once carried out for a prehellenic tree or mountain goddess who disappeared and returned on a seasonal basis. At the same time, the myth of Hera’s quarrel with Zeus should not be dismissed as a comical tale concocted to explain the ritual. At Stymphalos in Arkadia, there was a similar myth of Hera’s quarrel with and separation from Zeus, and there too the goddess’ cult titles referred to marital status. Hera, it was said, grew up in Stymphalos, and possessed three sanctuaries, one as Pais (Girl), one as Teleia, which she received upon her marriage to Zeus, and one as Chera (Widow). She received the latter because she returned to Stymphalos “while she was quarreling with Zeus” and was without a husband. Thus, in the Stymphalian cult Hera provided models for the three stages of female life as the Greeks conceptualized it, but it was her period of separation from Zeus that provided the impetus for the goddess’ return to her own land. Hera’s identity as a local goddess could best be manifested when she was apart from Zeus, not installed as his bride on Olympos.