There is yet another mark adhering to Juno, which clearly separates between her and the Homeric deities of strongly marked traditional character: namely, that she was not exempt from the touch of defeat and dishonour. For, in the course of her long feud with Hercules, that hero wounded her with an arrow in the left breast, and caused her to suffer desperate pain[339]. Again, she was ignominiously punished by Jupiter; who suspended her with her hands in chains, and with anvils hanging from her feet[340].
Her intense nationality.
Her strong and profound Greek nationality has obtained for her the name of Argeian Juno. The fervour of this nationality is most signally exemplified in the passage where Jupiter tells her, that she regards the Greeks as her children[341]; and again, where she lets us know that it was she[342] who collected the armament against Troy. She conducts Agamemnon the head of the Greek nation safely on the sea[343]; and carries Jason through the Πλαγκταί[344]. This is the vivifying idea of her whole character, and fills it with energy, vigilance, determination, and perseverance. Her hatred of Hercules cannot have been owing to conjugal jealousy, with which she is not troubled in Homer, for Jupiter recites his conquests in addressing her on Ida; indeed, had she been liable to this emotion, it must, from the frequent recurrence of its occasions, have supplied the main thread of her feeling and action. It was her identification in soul with the Perseid dynasty, the legitimate representative, in its own day, of the Hellenic race, and in occupation of its sovereign seat, that made her filch, on behalf of Eurystheus, the effect of the promise intended by Jupiter for Hercules, and that engaged her afterwards in a constant struggle to bear down that elastic hero, whose high personal gifts still threatened to eclipse his royal relative and competitor. So again, unlike Minerva[345], even while seeking to operate through Trojans, she studiously avoids contact with them. Minerva is sent as agent to Pandarus[346]; but this is on the suggestion of Juno. In truth, this intensely national stamp localizes the divinity of Juno, and, being counteracted by no other sign, fixes on her the note both of invention, and of Greek invention.
With respect now to her dignity and positive functions, these are of a very high order.
The Olympian gods rise from their seats to greet her (as they do to Jupiter) when she comes among them[347].
She acts immediately upon the thoughts of men: as when, at the outset of the Iliad, she prompts Achilles to call the first Greek assembly; τῷ γὰρ ἐπὶ φρεσὶ θῆκε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη[348]. On various occasions, she suggests action to Minerva, and it follows[349]: in the First Book, Juno is even said to send her, though by another arrangement the Poet has provided against attaching inferiority to that goddess[350]. It may be that in her seeming to employ Minerva, as in so many of her highest functions, she is reflecting one of the high prerogatives of Jupiter. Certain it is that by the side of her ceaseless and passionate activity, even Minerva appears, except on the battle-field, to play, in the Iliad, a part secondary to hers. She was so powerful[351], not only as to form one of the great trine rebellion against Jupiter, which so nearly dethroned him, but as to make him feel greatly relieved and rejoiced, in his differences with Neptune, when she promises to side with him[352]: ‘with your aid,’ so thinks Jupiter, ‘he will easily be kept in order, and will have to act as we could wish.’ She is certainly the most bold, untiring, zealous, and effective assistant to the Greeks: while she never bates a hair of her wrath, in compassion or otherwise, towards any Trojan.
Her mythological functions.
Like Neptune and others, she assumes the human form[353], and evokes a cloud of vapour this way or that: but she does much more. Her power displays itself in various forms, both over deities, and over animate and inanimate nature. In some of these particularly, her proceedings seem to be a reflected image of her husband’s. Iris[354] is not only his messenger, but her’s. She not only orders the Winds, but she sends the Sun to his setting[355], in spite of his reluctance. When, in her indignation at the boast of Hector, she rocks on her throne, she shakes Olympus[356]. She endows the deathless horses of Achilles with a voice[357]. And conjoined with Minerva, she thunders in honour of Agamemnon when just armed. Except the case of the horse, all these appear to be the reflected uses of the power of Jupiter as god of air.
We find from the speech of Phœnix, that with Minerva she can confer valour[358]. In a curious passage of the Odyssey, Homer tells us how the daughters of Pandarus were supplied by various goddesses with various qualities and gifts. Diana gave them size, Juno gave them εἶδος καὶ πινυτήν. We should rather have expected the last to come from Minerva: but she endowed them with ἔργα or industrial skill, so that her dignity has been in another way provided for. But if the lines are genuine, then in the capacity of Juno to confer the gift of πινυτὴ or prudence, we see a point of contact between her powerful but more limited, and Minerva’s larger character[359].