Despite Homer’s Panhellenizing tendencies, he recognizes Hera’s regional character as goddess of the Argive peninsula, giving her the epithet Hera Argeia (e. g. II. 4.8). In historical times she became the city-goddess of Argos itself, and her Argive sanctuary was the most venerable and famed center of her worship. Her festival there, known as the Heraia or Hekatombaia (Sacrifice of one hundred Oxen), was held in the first month of the year. A grand procession escorted the priestess, who rode in an ox-drawn wagon from the city to the sanctuary several miles distant. The youth recognized as most virtuous carried a sacred shield in the procession, marking his and his age-mates’ transition to adulthood and warrior status. After the procession, there were athletic competitions for which the prize was, again, a bronze shield.2 Hera’s cult at Argos shows a preoccupation with two aspects of the Argolid’s prosperity: the herds of cattle on which its wealth was based, and its military might. Terracotta figurines from the Heraion indicate that Hera was also viewed as a kourotrophic deity, one who nourished and protected the young. Often she is shown holding a child in her lap. Sometimes she holds not a child but a horse, an emblem of aristocratic privilege. Hera’s cult seems to have been closely bound up with the efforts of the early Archaic Argives to define their relationship with the heroic past.
The Argive Heraion was constructed over the remains of a Mycenaean settlement, but there is no clear evidence of continuity of cult from the Bronze Age to the ninth century, when activity at the Heraion becomes archaeologically visible. Around 700, a terrace was built using huge “Cyclopean” blocks in imitation of the Bronze Age architectural style, and shortly thereafter a temple of stone and wood with a colonnade was added. This Archaic structure was not superseded by a newer temple until the fifth century, when the sanctuary was transformed from a rallying center for the towns in the region to a symbol of the power of Argos, by then the dominant city. In 2000-01, excavators found (SEG 51 [2001] 410) a cache of inscribed bronze tablets recording, among other things, the sums borrowed from the state treasuries of Pallas and Hera to pay for the construction of this temple. It possessed sculptures depicting not myths of Hera herself, but subjects of interest to the Argives: the birth of Zeus, the battle of the gods and giants, the Trojan war, and the saga of Orestes.
In Pausanias’ time, one entered the temple after walking through a series of statues of the former priestesses (styled kleidouchoi or Keyholders), whose tenures provided a chronological framework for the city’s history. The list of priestesses was already ancient in the fifth century, when Hellanicus (FGrH 4 F 74-82) used it as the basis for an account of the Greeks from the Trojan war to his own day. The cult image of the Classical period was a famous one by Polykleitos, fashioned of gold and ivory over a wood core. The seated goddess held a scepter and a pomegranate, symbols of temporal power and fertility. A more ancient wooden image must have existed, but presumably was destroyed when the Archaic temple burned in 423/2. When Pausanias (2.17.3) visited the temple, he saw a venerable image of pearwood taken from nearby Tiryns, another ancient Heraian cult center, which the Argives had installed on a pillar beside Polykleitos’ statue. The pillar itself may have held special significance, for a fragment of the Argive epic Phoronis (fr. 3 Davies, EGF) describes Hera’s priestess adorning “the high column of the Olympian queen, Hera Argeia” with fillets and tassels. Another item of interest in the temple was the “couch of Hera,” a symbol of Hera’s status as the bride of Zeus.
The Asterion river near the Heraion was regarded as the father of Hera’s three nurses, the nymphs Akraia, Prosymna and Euboia, who were named after features of the sanctuary’s topography. Local tradition, therefore, held that Argos was Hera’s birthplace. Women conducted secret rituals at the Heraion, involving purifications, sacrifices, and the offering of garlands twined from a local herb also called asterion. The women wove a robe for Hera, as they did at Olympia, first taking a ritual bath in the waters of the spring or well called Amymone. The hundreds of miniature water vessels (hudriai) from the excavations further attest the importance of water in these activities. Perhaps the ritual involved a bath for Hera’s image; a legend describing how Hera took an annual bath to restore her virginity was attached to the spring Kanathos in nearby Nauplia. The “water of freedom” of the stream Eleutherion, near the Heraion, was used for the women’s secret rites, and was also drunk by slaves and prisoners about to be emancipated. Hera’s daughter Hebe (Youth), whose statue stood beside hers in the Heraion, similarly granted asylum to suppliants and freed prisoners at her ancient sanctuary in Phlious.3
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