The Cults of the Greek States

In searching through the religious monuments that survive of this worship, the inquirer has to be on his guard against the frequent false interpretations that confront him. There is no Greek divinity so difficult to recognize as Hera; for her figure has often been disguised by false restoration, and on the other hand the name has been applied to representations to which it cannot be proved to belong.

This ambiguity arises chiefly from the lack of any significant and peculiar attribute which may at once reveal her as clearly as Athena is revealed by the aegis, Artemis by the bow, or Demeter by the corn-stalks. Of all the various symbols, badges, attributes, fashions of drapery that have been supposed to be specially characteristic of Hera, there is none that is invariably found; and none that is not found with other divinities also, with the one exception of the peacock; but this comes too late into the artistic representations to be of much service. The veil might be supposed to be proper to the matron-goddess, the bride and the wife of Zeus; and she wears it sitting by his side in the terra-cotta group found at Samos; it appears in the Argive statuette of early fifthcentury style, and on the Selinus metope, but rarely, if ever, on the archaic vases, and only occasionally in works of perfected and later art; and the veiled head of Hera is exceptional on coins, the devices of Capua and the Boeotian Orchomenos being among the few instances from the Greek period.