CHAPTER VII - HERA

Summary

The cult of Hera is less manifold and less spiritual than many other Greek cults, but possesses great historic interest. It can be traced in most parts of ancient Greece, and had the strongest hold upon the sites of the oldest civilization, Argos, Mycenae, and Sparta; we can find no trace of its importation from without, no route along which it travelled into Greece; for in the islands, with the exception of Euboea and Samos where the legend connected the worship with Argos, it is nowhere prominent, nor does it appear to have had such vogue in Thessaly and along the northern shores as it had in Boeotia, Euboea, Attica, Sicyon, Corinth, and the Peloponnese^19—93. We may regard the cult then as a primeval heritage of the Greek peoples, or at least of the Achaean and Ionic tribes; for its early and deep influence over these is attested by the antiquity and peculiar sanctity of the Argive and Samian worship. Whether it was alien to the Dorians in their primitive home, wherever that was, is impossible to decide; in the Peloponnese no doubt they found and adopted it, but they may have brought it with them to Cos and Crete, where we find traces of it. The Hera T∈λχινία of Rhodes, like the Spartan and Argive Hera, was probably pre-Dorian.