Hera then sent the giant Tityos to kill Leto.

In Pausanias ' recounting, Hera sent witches ( as they were called by the Thebans ) to hinder Alcmene's delivery of Heracles.

This angered Hera, so she sent Eris to rack discord upon them.

The immediate necessity for the Labours of Heracles is as penance for Heracles ' murder of his own family, in a fit of madness, which had been sent by Hera ; however, further human rather than mythic motivation is supplied by mythographers who note that their respective families had been rivals for the throne of Mycenae.

Herakles strangling the snakes sent by Hera, Attica | Attic red-figured stamnos, ca.

While Heracles was still an infant, Hera sent two serpents to kill him as he lay in his cot.

When Heracles took the cattle of Geryon, he shot Hera in the right breast with a triple-barbed arrow: the wound was incurable and left her in constant pain, as Dione tells Aphrodite in the Iliad, Book V. Afterwards, Hera sent a gadfly to bite the cattle, irritate them and scatter them.

Hera then sent a flood which raised the water level of a river so much that Heracles could not ford the river with the cattle.

Hera sent her Titans to rip the baby apart, from which he was called Zagreus (" Torn in Pieces ").

Hera then sent a gadfly ( Greek oistros, compare oestrus )) to sting Io as she wandered the earth.

He and his twin were just eight months old when Hera sent two giant snakes into the children's chamber.

His wife Hera sent ever-watchful Argus Panoptes, with 100 eyes, to guard her, but Hermes was sent to distract the guardian and slay him.

Heifer Io was loosed to roam the world, stung by a maddening gadfly sent by Hera, and wandered to Egypt, thus placing her descendant Belus in Egypt ; his sons Cadmus and Danaus would then " return " to mainland Greece.

Hera sent Eris to cause trouble between the two of them.

In the Danaan founding myth, Poseidon had dried up the springs of the Argolid out of anger at Inachus for testifying that the land belonged to the ancient goddess, Hera ; to counter this drought, Danaus sent his daughters to draw water.

To annoy Heracles, Hera sent a gadfly to bite the cattle, irritate them and scatter them.

Hera then sent a flood which raised the level of a river so much, Heracles could not cross with the cattle.

* The Sphinx was sent by Hera to plague the city of Thebes.

One version holds that Philoctetes was bitten by a snake that Hera sent to molest him as punishment for his or his father's service to Heracles.

The version related by Hyginus holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not deliver wherever the sun shone.

Heracles landed on Cos to escape a storm sent upon him by Hera, but the Coans took him for a pirate and attacked him ; in a battle that ensued, Eurypylus was killed by Heracles.

After slaying the Nemean lion, Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles.

She cared for him and tended to his wounds, caused by a serpent of Hera.

The most important deities were: Zeus, the supreme god and ruler of the sky ; Hera, his wife and goddess of marriage ; Athena, goddess of wisdom ; Poseidon, god of the sea ; Demeter, goddess of the earth ; Apollo, god of the sun, law, reason, music and poetry ; Artemis, goddess of the moon, the hunt and the wilderness ; Aphrodite, goddess of love ; Ares, God of war ; Hermes, god of commerce and medicine, and Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork.

When Zeus ' wife Hera discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she banned Leto from giving birth on " terra firma ".

It is also stated that Hera kidnapped Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor.

An account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma ( the mainland ) or on an island.

Hera was angry with Zeus, her husband, because he had impregnated Leto.

But the island of Delos ( or Ortygia in the Homeric Hymn to Artemis ) disobeyed Hera, and Leto gave birth there.

72 accounts for the island's archaic name Ortygia by asserting that Zeus transformed Leto into a quail ( ortux ) in order to prevent Hera from finding out his infidelity, and Kenneth McLeish suggested further that in quail form Leto would have given birth with as few birth-pains as a mother quail suffers when it lays an egg.

According to the Homeric Hymn III to Delian Apollo, Hera detained Eileithyia to already prevent Leto from going into labor with Artemis and Apollo, since the father was Zeus.

When Hera discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she banned Leto from giving birth on terra-firma, or the mainland, or any island at sea.

Alternatively, Hera kidnapped Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor.

For the classical Greeks, Leto is scarcely to be conceived apart from being pregnant and finding a place to be delivered of Apollo and Artemis, for Hera being jealous, made it so all lands shunned her.

When Hera, the most conservative of goddesses — for she had the most to lose in changes to the order of nature — discovered that Leto was pregnant and that Zeus was the father, she realized that the offspring would cement the new order.

" Hera banned Leto from giving birth on " terra firma ", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under the sun.

Only Hera kept apart, perhaps to kidnap Eileithyia or Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to prevent Leto from going into labor.

He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, but was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and / or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode.

According to the Homeric Hymn III to Delian Apollo, Hera detained Eileithyia, who was coming from the Hyperboreans in the far north, to prevent Leto from going into labor with Artemis and Apollo, because the father was Zeus.

which became identified with Delos, which was the only piece of earth to give refuge to the fugitive Leto when, pregnant with Zeus's children, she was pursued by vengeful Hera.

Thetis, although a daughter of the sea-god Nereus, was also brought up by Hera, further explaining her resistance to the advances of Zeus.

The other gods tricked Hera into letting her go by offering her a necklace, nine yards ( 8 m ) long, of amber.

The two terms may not have originally been distinguished ; though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods ; it was with ambrosia Hera " cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh ", and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her.

Enraged, Hera or Artemis ( some accounts say both ) changed her into a bear.

Hera struck Artemis on the ears with her own quiver, causing the arrows to fall out.

Either Artemis " slew Kallisto with a shot of her silver bow ," perhaps urged by the wrath of Juno ( Hera ) or later Arcas, the eponym of Arcadia, nearly killed his bear-mother, when she had wandered into the forbidden precinct of Zeus.

The goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite had been invited along with the rest of Olympus to the forced wedding of Peleus and Thetis, who would become the parents of Achilles, but Eris had been snubbed because of her troublemaking inclinations.

When, shortly before his son Heracles was born, Zeus proclaimed the next-born descendant of Perseus should get the kingdom, Hera thwarted his ambitions by delaying Alcmene's labour and having her candidate Eurystheus born prematurely.

Hera wakes up while breastfeeding and then realizes she is nursing an unknown baby: she pushes the baby away and a jet of her milk sprays the night sky, producing the faint band of light known as the Milky Way.

Portrayed as majestic and solemn, often enthroned, and crowned with the polos ( a high cylindrical crown worn by several of the Great Goddesses ), Hera may bear a pomegranate in her hand, emblem of fertile blood and death and a substitute for the narcotic capsule of the opium poppy.

Hera was known for her jealous and vengeful nature, most notably against Zeus's lovers and offspring, but also against mortals who crossed her, such as Pelias.

Though greatest and earliest free-standing temple to Hera was the Heraion of Samos, in the Greek mainland Hera was especially worshipped as " Argive Hera " ( Hera Argeia ) at her sanctuary that stood between the former Mycenaean city-states of Argos and Mycenae, where the festivals in her honor called Heraia were celebrated.