Hebe

Nectar above a city at war

In the Iliad, Homer’s poem of the Trojan War, the gods sit beside Zeus on a golden floor and gaze down at Troy. They raise their cups and argue over whether the war should end. Hebe moves among them, pouring nectar, the drink of the gods. She keeps the gathering supplied while the gods’ favour threatens to send the armies back into battle.

This is Hebe’s first action in the poem. The Iliad does not stop to explain her role or her name. It shows her carrying the drink of the immortals at the very moment Zeus goads the goddesses Hera and Athena about their hatred of Troy. Hebe is present in the argument but takes no side.

Serving is not her only task, and it does not keep her out of the action. In the next book of the poem, Hera and Athena decide to enter the fighting. Hera harnesses her horses, and Hebe fits bronze wheels with eight spokes onto an iron axle. The wheels have gold rims, bronze tyres and silver hubs. The chariot cannot cross from Olympus to the battlefield until this careful work is done.

A daughter of Zeus and Hera

The early Greek poet Hesiod gives Hebe her place in the family of the Olympian gods. Hera bears three children to Zeus: Hebe, Ares and Eileithyia. They are close in family but far apart in what they do. Ares goes into battle. Eileithyia governs childbirth. Hebe pours at the feast of the gods and makes ready her mother’s chariot.

That family matters, because the Iliad never treats Hebe as a nameless servant. In the list of gods near the start of Hesiod’s poem, she wears a crown. She is a daughter working inside the household of Zeus and Hera. Carrying nectar and fitting wheels are the acts of a goddess, not of a mortal servant let into Olympus for a time.

Her tasks also place her where the gods’ movements turn. Cups pass from hand to hand while the gods decide what to do. Wheels connect axle and chariot before Hera can go down to the battle. Hebe appears only briefly each time, but each time she makes a gathering or a departure possible.

The bride after the labours

Hesiod returns to Hebe once Heracles has finished his grievous labours, his long series of hard tasks. Heracles was a son of Zeus by a mortal woman, Alcmene. He marries Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, on snowy Olympus. From then on he lives among the gods, free from trouble and old age.

The marriage ends the story of Heracles. It does not begin a new labour for Hebe. It shows that when he is admitted among the deathless gods, he also gains a place in their family. Hera had opposed him through many trials. Now her daughter becomes his wife, once those trials are over.

Hesiod tells of no courtship and no making of peace. He sets the wedding among other marriages that move the line between mortal and divine life. Just before it, Ariadne is made deathless for the god Dionysus. Then Heracles enters the same ageless state with Hebe. Hebe stands at the point where finished labour gives way to life on Olympus.

The pair at Kynosarges

In Athens the marriage had a place of worship. The Greek traveller Pausanias describes Kynosarges as sacred to Heracles. He records altars there to Heracles and to Hebe, and calls her the daughter of Zeus and the wife of Heracles. Separate altars to Alcmene and Iolaus stood beside them.

The group of altars keeps the hero’s mortal and divine family together. Alcmene is his mother. Iolaus shares most of his labours. Hebe belongs to his life after them. Pausanias does not describe a single family altar. Each figure has a place of its own within the same sacred ground.

So Kynosarges keeps more than the bare fact that Heracles married on Olympus. At this Athenian site, Hebe is part of how people worshipped his whole journey: his birth through Alcmene, his work beside Iolaus, and his marriage among the gods once his suffering ended. The goddess who once made ready a chariot stands here at the end of another figure’s long journey.