We may believe that all the important centres of the worship of Hera possessed a temple-image, though this is not always recorded. But only very few of the ideas which we have found in this religion appear to have been definitely expressed in specially characteristic monuments. The record of these, so far as it is explicit, shows that she was usually represented as the wedded wife of Zeus, the goddess who cherished the lawful union of men and women; and this accords with the main idea of the cults and with her general character in Greek legend. Her earliest dyaXixara or symbols were, like those of most Greek divinities, aniconic and wholly inexpressive. A stock cut out from the tree was her badge at Thespiae25, her first sacred emblem at Samos was a board96, at Argos a lofty pillar in the primitive period96. And of most of the earliest images mentioned by Pausanias and other writers, nothing significant is told us. The most interesting is the archaic image of Hera, a ξόανoν or wooden statue, carved by Smilisa for the temple in Samos, probably about the middle of the seventh century B.C.97 This supplanted an older idol, and retained its place in the island, worship down to the latest period.

Among the monuments that illustrate the worship of Athena, we find the coin-representations in some respects the most important. Not only do they give us manifold testimony of the character that belonged to her in the national religion, but they also prove more clearly than any other monumental evidence the very wide diffusion of her cult.

The very large number of vases upon which her figure appears have more to do with mythology than with public worship; perhaps the only type of the goddess, preserved in vase-paintings, which can be certainly recognized as connected with cult is that of the warlike Athena holding her shield and brandishing her spear, the type of the ancient Palladia and probably of the Athena Polias.

As regards the works of sculpture, those to which any definite cult-name can be attached are very few; but many, and especially those that can be connected with the creations of Pheidias, are of very great value for the history of religious art. We have no proof of the prevalence of wholly aniconic images of Athena, and it has been shown that the religion of Pallas contained comparatively few ‘ survivals’ of primitive thought and primitive ritual. The earliest monuments that have come down to us express ideas that are already relatively advanced.

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.

As regards the monuments of the earlier pre-Pheidian period the most interesting question is how far they contain the germ of the Pheidian masterpiece, how far the artists had anticipated Pheidias in the discovery of forms appropriate to the ideal. But our evidence of the earliest archaic period is most scanty; no statues have survived, and probably very few existed; we have to collect testimony from coins, vase-paintings, and reliefs, and most of these belong to the later archaism. The means of expression that the workers in this period possessed was chiefly external and mechanical; character and personality were chiefly manifested by attributes. The most usual of these was the thunderbolt, whether he was represented in action or repose; also on some archaic works, there was not only the thunderbolt in his hand, but on his head a garland of flowers, and the character becomes more manifold by the accumulation of attributes. Nothing is told us in the ancient literature about the form or pose of these representations; but examining the series of archaic coins and vases, we gather that there were three commonly accepted types showing three varieties of pose: (i) we see the striding Zeus with the thunderbolt in his right hand levelled against an imaginary enemy or transgressor on Messenian tetradrachms, on later Attic coins, and in the very archaic bronze from Olympiaa, and the eagle is sometimes flying above his extended left arm or perched upon it; (2) the standing figure of Zeus in repose—for instance, on the coin of Athens holding the thunderbolt in his lowered right hand, and stretching out his left as though demanding libation.