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Bryn Mawr Classical Review 95.02.04

Joan V. O'Brien, The Transformations of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad. Lanham: Rowmanand Littlefield, 1993. Pp. xvi + 235. $22.95 (pb). ISBN 0-8476-7808-3.

Reviewed by Ingrid E. Holmberg, University of Victoria.

This study of Hera is a welcome one indeed, as I can attest from the

personal experience of attempting to find material on Hera beyond the purely etymological when I was writing my thesis. O'Brien relies upon acombination of archaeological, ritual and literary evidence in her attempt to

present a cohesive picture of the changing nature and character of thegoddess. Her three main sources are the sites and myths associated withHera at Samos and Argos, and the Iliad ; these provide a view of the goddessas a complex mixture of Olympian sky goddess and chthonic deity (4).Despite different rites and founding myths, O'Brien sees the Hera at Samosand Argos as essentially the same deity: both Samos and Argos seem to haveworshiped a trifunctional "Mycenaean Hera" (171); cultic myths associatedwith both sites describe priestesses with Argolic fathers and significant

thefts (4, 55, 143-144, 169). O'Brien concludes that "the rites at both placesapparently had antecedents in the Mycenaean Argolid where BOW=PISPO/TNIA *H(/RA was revered as the Argolid's ox goddess linked to ox,

bull, and heifer myths during its formative period" (170). A primary aspectof this goddess which becomes prominent in the Iliad is that she "had power over the life and death of .. heroes, including Heracles 'he who wins famefrom Hera'" (171).

Chapters one through three focus on the evidence at and relating to Samos.The archaeological evidence prior to the large seventh century sanctuarydates back to the Bronze Age and exhibits a strong Anatolian/Carian

influence (4, 11-12). The architectural remains (the cult houses and altar)seem to reflect contemporaneous Greek structures, while the iconography of a goddess accompanied by animals, the potnia theron , seems to suggest anAsian fertility goddess (40-43, 45-50, 69-70). O'Brien connects theenlargement of the shrine in the seventh century with the assimilation of thelocal Hera cult to the Panhellenic Olympian religion (15). Significantly, noconnection with Zeus is documented before the seventh century (15, 39).O'Brien argues that the change in Hera's meaning from a fertility and

protection goddess pre-600 to the wife and sister of Zeus post-600 can beseen in the switch from the aniconic xoana (about which we only knowfrom literature) as the cult representation of Hera to iconic statuettes. Thefourth-century Samian Inventory of the Heraion describes a fascinating

juxtaposition between the earlier aniconic wooden image and the later iconic statue as "the goddess" and "the goddess behind" (25, 30). The new

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statue occupies the position of importance within the temple because itrepresents "Hera's emerging Panhellenic role" as sister-wife of Zeus (31).

O'Brien turns to accounts of the Samian Tonaia and later the Argolic

Hekatombaia and Bouphonia in her attempts to disentangle early cult praxisfrom later myths. In these rituals and their meanings, O'Brien again sees achange from an earlier of fertility and protection to the marriage of Hera andZeus (54-55, 74, 151). I found myself extremely sceptical about theseattempts to document or explain early rituals for two reasons. The first isthat the description of the rites, which O'Brien argues precede the seventhcentury Olympian assimilation, are provided by much later authors such asAthenaeus and Pausanias. Clearly both sets of cultic myths focus on bindingthe goddess (or her surrogate priestess) to a tree (55-56, 143-144) andvarious scenarios involving oxen in Argos, but whether these are directlyrelated to seasonal fertility in the sense which O'Brien intends seemsdubious to me. Second, the goddess of fertility must be bound to her tree toensure her presence (55-56, 144). Why? Does she not wish to perform her role? Is she not beneficent? The question of Hera's beneficence arises againin her relationship to heroes.

The discussion of Hera in the Argolid in chapter five parallels chapter threeon Samos and should properly precede the analysis of the Iliad in chapter four. O'Brien admits that the interpretation of Hera in Mycenaean Argolid is"hardest to weigh and fraught with problems of interpretation" (6). As inSamos, the evidence (written in this case) shows that a potnia called Heraalready existed in the Mycenaean period, "or at least had cultic continuitywith the Hera of the Archaic period" (120). The potnia seems to havecomprised three aspects -- trees, war, and family (126, 127) which evolvedin Greek tradition into several goddesses (58, 130-131). O'Brien identifiesthe goddess of the column who is associated with the tree as the"Mycenaean Hera" (127), the most direct predecessor of the later Hera.O'Brien makes the provocative suggestion that, if Hera was understood as

part of a trifunctional goddess, there is "the very real possibility that earlyregional versions of the Judgment of Paris would have featured Parisreceiving his three choices from the one Argolic potnia , Hera" (162).O'Brien presumes here that the Argolic potnia is Hera, rather than Athena or

Aphrodite, or, as seems most appropriate, a mixture of the three under thetitle potnia . This theory also begs the question of why Hera is then angry atTroy if she has not in fact been scorned by Paris (163-164).

O'Brien's most interesting interpretations are her elucidations of therelationship between Hera the seasonal goddess and heroes. O'Brien followsother scholars in attributing Hera, hero, and Horai to the commonetymological Indo-European root of *ier, "year, spring". Hera thus means"of the year, spring" and hero "he who belongs to the goddess of theseasons" (5, 113-117, 137-139). Hera controls or tames the seasons in their cycle (185), as well as controlling or taming the seasonal nature of the

Greek hero through death, or less frequently, marriage (117). The definingquality of a hero of course is his short life or early death, which O'Brienargues is controlled or tamed by Hera (118). The paradigmatic example of a

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hero controlled by Hera is Herakles, whose birth and death are connected toher (117, 156). O'Brien reads the later version of the Herakles myth inwhich he marries Hebe (heroes who die lose their H(/BH) and attains acertain immortality as an Olympian perversion of Herakles' original heroic

death (150, 192).

Turning her attention to Achilles, O'Brien illuminates some aspects of arelationship between this Iliadic hero and Hera. O'Brien overstates her pointwhen she claims that Hera is "the source of [Achilles'] demonic power"(81), and that she is his "tutelary goddess" (91) who "inspir[es] " him (92).She argues unconvincingly earlier in the book that Achilles imbibes Hera'sXO/LOS from Thetis, who transmits it to him because she "suckle[d]" Hera(93-94, 80, 82). Achilles therefore inherits his XO/LOS from Hera (O'Brienis a bit confusing about whether this is biologically or psychologicallydetermined, see 108 and 174). The text of the Iliad does not provide a basisfor these assertions. Nevertheless, Hera does step in protectively to restrainAchilles' ME/NOS in Iliad 1 (159) and she is also instrumental in savinghim from the river in Iliad 21 (87). O'Brien also sees Hera's presence in theepisode in Iliad 19 where Achilles' two horses announce his fate (190-191).The tamed and yoked horses address the hero who is to be most famouslytamed by his fate. O'Brien unfortunately does not refer to the two recentworks by Sheila Murnaghan ("Maternity and Mortality in Homeric Poetry,"Classical Antiquity 11.2 (1992): 242-264) and Laura Slatkin ( The Power of Thetis , Berkeley, 1991) which discuss maternity and the mortality of heroes.

The final chapter of the book examines the panhellenic transformations of Hera manifested mostly in the Iliad (71). Hera's contact with Panhellenismhas lessened her power (172) and she has become the goddess of guile in the

Dios Apate of Iliad 14 and the Dios Ate of Iliad 19 (175). In the Dios Ate in particular, O'Brien reverts to a religio-political explanation for Hera's behavior that is not suggested by the text. O'Brien states that Hera interfereswith Herakles' birth for "hegemony in the Argolid" (176), that the scenerepresents a "struggle between Hera and Zeus for regional sovereignty"(176), and that Hera "establishes" cultic hegemony over the Argolid (178,again on 183), "thereby rationalizing to a Panhellenic audience why Zeuswas not always considered supreme in Argolic myth". O'Brien also analyzes

Hera's statements in Iliad 4.51-56 as the goddess ceding political power tothe new order (160-161), leaving "the retrospective impression that she wasresponsible for the disappearance of the palace civilization in the Argolid aswell as in Troy" (85). I am extremely wary of using the Iliad in this way as ahistorical (or religio-historical document). Likewise, O'Brien repeatedlyrefers to an "early Argolic tradition", "Argolic motifs" (110), "earlier Argolicsong" (119, see 164, 165), and a substratum of Argolic myth (206) in the

Iliad which she does not demonstrate.

O'Brien concludes: "This study is provisional and incomplete" (203). This is particularly true for the question of the possible influence of the Minoan

potnia and tree goddess (205-206), although O'Brien makes passing mentionof a Minoan connection with respect to the Samian PO/LOS (33), trees(126), and in the Appendix on Delos (227). And, even though there has been

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no analysis of Minoan elements, O'Brien states: "Hence, even within her circumscribed Iliadic role, her aggressive character is more the agonisticGreek than the peace-loving Minoan" (205). O'Brien also relies upon thesame broadly generalizing tone to strike a feminist note: "Panhellenic

patriarchy, however unconsciously, transforms a goddess of soaring life intoa scheming wife, and a universal tamer into a wife who tames women tomen" (206). Both sentences are examples of the unreflexive or untheorizedapproach which characterizes the book. A study of Hera would seem fertileground for a feminist approach, but while O'Brien makes occasional bluntnods to feminism such as the one just cited, she also often seems to accept atface value the judgments made by characters in the Iliadic text, such asHera's "unremitting lust for vengeance", her "demonic degeneracy", her representation as a "savage goddess", and the accusations that Hera wouldeat raw flesh (77), even though this is clearly an insult or exaggeration.Conversely, O'Brien avoids questions of Hera's benignity in other instances,such as the necessity of binding the goddess to ensure fertility, and moreimportantly, the meaning and nature of a goddess who demands from or imposes upon men in the prime of their lives an early death. Is this goddesshostile to heroes, as she is to Herakles? (For a discussion of Hera andHerakles' relationship see Nicole Loraux, "Herakles: The Super-Male andthe Feminine" in Before Sexuality ). O'Brien also does not mention Hera'smeaning for women, and constructs Hera almost entirely upon her relationship to the male. The stated aim of the series to which this book

belongs, "Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches" edited by Gregory Nagy, is to approach Classical subjects from an interdisciplinary andtheoretical perspective (xiii). Like Lowenstam's book in the same series, thisone does present an interdisciplinary approach, but it is sadly lacking incritical theory.

Despite these misgivings, The Transformation of Hera usefully gathers and presents a wide variety of information about the early Hera, and providesstimulating and frequently provocative analyses of Hera's ritual, mythic, andliterary dimensions.