Word: hera
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Squalling Grammarians. Traditional translations make much of Homer's epithets (Hera is "white-armed"; Odysseus generally "crafty"). Graves uses them sparingly, and sometimes ironically. The gods are treated with something less than respect; Zeus is a blowhard who hardly ever means what he says, and Hera, his wife, might be a garden-club president. When Zeus, who favors the Trojans, remarks that Hera protects the Greeks as if they were her own bastards, she replies pertly: "Revered Son of Cronus, what a thing to say!" Cartoonist Ronald Searle's illustrations wittily support Graves's wry treatment...
...laborers set to work (TIME, Sept. 6). From tombs came vivid paintings on stone of household scenes and fighting gladiators. Last summer Sestieri uncovered a small, completely buried building, made a hole in its roof and lowered himself into the stagnant dimness. He was in the central shrine of Hera, Goddess of Fertility, and patron of Paestum. Jars and vases held solidified honey, sacred to Hera (see opposite page). It is likely that no one had entered that shrine for at least 2,500 years...
...started digging with a crew of 46 workmen, and soon found evidence to support his educated guess. Among his rich preliminary finds: a colored, life-size terra-cotta statue of a god, probably Zeus adorned with a thin, Dali-like mustache; a rare, ten-inch nude model of Hera, wife of Zeus and the goddess of fertility, in the squatting position of ancient Greek women in childbirth...
...ornate, gilded bronze water jars. Each jar, decorated with figures of female heads, sphinxes, rams and serpents, was filled with an amber-colored, resinlike substance: solidified honey. Presumably distilled from the nectar of Paestum's famed roses, the 2,500-year-old honey was the classic sacrifice to Hera. The temple was probably devoted to her; Hera's image was laid "to rest" on the bedstead each night...
...deep, narrow strait separating Europe and Asia, named in honor of an early swimmer: Io, daughter of the river god Inachos. Io, a looker, dallied with Zeus, who took the precaution-unavailable to other philandering husbands-of changing her into a heifer whenever his wife hove in sight. But Hera (Mrs. Zeus) was a shade too smart for him. One day she archly asked her husband to give her the heifer as a pet. To get out of the fix, poor Io galloped down over the plains of Illyria, across the Balkan Mountains and swam the Bosporus. She kept going...