Homeric Hymn 12: To Hera
A brief 5-line invocation to Hera as golden-throned queen of the immortals — daughter of Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus, the most beautiful and most reverenced of the Olympian goddesses.
About the Poem
The twelfth Homeric Hymn is a complete prooemial invocation of just 5 lines to Hera, describing her as the golden-throned queen of the immortals, surpassing all in beauty, daughter of Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus.
The hymn is notable for what it doesn’t say: there is no mention of Hera’s famous jealousy, her strife with Zeus, or her bitter enmity toward heroes like Heracles. The poet presents the idealized, ceremonial Hera — the divine queen in her full majesty, universally reverenced on Olympus alongside her husband. This is the cultic Hera of major sanctuaries like Argos (where the Heraion was one of the oldest Greek temples) and Samos.
Complete Text
Greek (Homeric)
Ἥρην ἀείδω χρυσόθρονον, ἣν τέκε Ῥείη, ἀθανάτων βασίλειαν, ὑπείροχον εἶδος ἔχουσαν, Ζηνὸς ἐριγδούποιο κασιγνήτην ἅμ’ ἄκοιτιν, τὴν πᾶσαι μάκαιρες Ὀλυμπιάδες μεγάλοιο ἐσσέβον Ζηνί τ’ ἴσον τὸ γεράεσκον ἁπάντων.
(Full Greek text at Perseus Digital Library, link below.)
English (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, 1914 — public domain)
[1] I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bare. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, — the glorious one whom all the blessed throughout high Olympus reverence and honour even as Zeus who delights in thunder.
Hera’s Epithets
The epithet χρυσόθρονος (chrysothronos, “golden-throned”) is one of the most common applied to Hera in archaic epic poetry — it appears in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and marks her divine sovereignty. The golden throne is a symbol of ruling authority; to be golden-throned is to be enthroned in the permanent, imperishable substance of divinity.
“Surpassing all in beauty” (ὑπείροχον εἶδος ἔχουσαν) situates Hera as the pre-eminent goddess in visual splendor, a claim supported by the Judgment of Paris narrative where she and Aphrodite competed directly for this title.
The formula describing her as simultaneously sister (κασιγνήτην) and wife (ἄκοιτιν) of Zeus acknowledges the theological complexity of the divine marriage — a sibling union that archaic Greek religious thought accepted as appropriate for the most exalted beings, analogous to the sibling marriages of Egyptian divine rulers.
Citations
- Evelyn-White, H. G. (trans.). Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Loeb Classical Library 57. Harvard University Press, 1914. Public domain. https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomericHymns3.html
- Callimachus, Hymn to Hera — the only surviving Callimachean hymn, significantly, that is lost. See fragments in Pfeiffer’s edition.
- Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Trans. Raffan. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. Chapter on Hera.
- Perseus Digital Library, Homeric Hymns (Greek text): http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0137:hymn=12