Did the goddess Hera achieve fame because she slept in the arms of great Zeus? In this book, Joan V. O'Brien explodes this verdict. Starting from the etymological link between Hera's name and the Greek words for 'hero' and 'the season,' O'Brien provides an archeological, historical, and literary reassessment of the goddess as a religious, cultural, and political construct.
Joan V. O'Brien is Professor of Classics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She is the author of In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, and Greece (Scholars Press, 1982).
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This work encompasses an impressive breadth of material-literary, archaeological, and religious-out of which Professor O'Brien has shaped an important, revisionary study on the changing character of Hera in the context of Olympian and pre-Olympian religions. -- Thomas F. Scanlon, University of California, Riverside The author has taken care to address not only her classicist colleagues, but also more general readers interested in Goddess religion and in the development of a theology free of gender bias. -- Deborah Boedeker, CoDirector, Center for Hellenic Studies This study of Hera is a welcome one indeed... Bryn Mawr Classical Review ...[a] fascinating, thorough, and comprehensive study of the pre-Homeric importance of the goddessssss -- Phyllis B. Katz, NEW ENGLAND CLASSICAL NEWSLETTER AND JOURNAL There is much food for thought here...of great interest to everyone interested in Greek literature, myth and religion. It will also have its effect in the field of feminist theology... The Classical Review ...an exciting and meticulously detailed exploration of this most enigmatic of Olympian goddesses, -- Richard Martin, Princeton University ...[a] fascinating, thorough, and comprehensive study of the pre-Homeric importance of the goddess -- Phyllis B. Katz, NEW ENGLAND CLASSICAL NEWSLETTER AND JOURNAL
