Hera "skated across the very highest peaks"
The liminal “space” between our world and the sacred.
Book 14 of the Iliad is a mesmerizing, poetic interlude in the war, an astonishingly beautiful glimpse of the concealed world of Being expressed through the Olympian gods. Emily Wilson’s translation is breathtaking.
Hera, wife of Zeus and queen of the goddesses, is furious with her husband, who is sitting on Mount Ida watching the Greeks and Trojans. He has favored the latter under Hector’s leadership and brought them to the beachhead of the Greeks, threatening to burn their ships and massacre all of them, far from their home, leaving them nameless. Hera and Athena have been helping the Greeks, and they are unhappy with Zeus’ actions.
Hera devises a plan. She will seduce Zeus, and, with the god Sleep’s help, will put him to sleep, allowing her and Poseidon to rally the Greeks. She enters her private chamber that no other god has a key to and prepares herself with perfumes and gowns. She then goes to Aphrodite, who has been helping the Trojans because of her princely son Aeneus and asks for help.
“My darling child, will you do something for me? Or will you turn me down out of resentment, because I help the Greeks and you the Trojans?” (She deceived Aphrodite by telling her this was for a different cause than seducing Zeus - for another time).
Aphrodite cannot resist offering her charms.
"It would be quite impossible, and wrong, to turn you down, because you spend your nights wrapped in the arms of Zeus, the greatest god.”
Receiving her charms, Hera flies from Mount Olympus to visit the god Sleep.
Book 14 is an opportunity to experience non-metaphysical poetry, bringing forth that liminal “space” between our world and the sacred.
The following is the most pleasantly unexpected expression in the story so far. There are no metaphysical ideas (Plato) or syllogisms (Aristotle) capable of capturing Hera's poetic excursion. It is pure pre-Socratic wonder.
“The goddess Hera skated across the very highest peaks and with her feet she never touched the ground. She hovered at Mount Athos and then plunged into the billowing sea and out at Lemnos, the town of godlike Thoas. There she met Death’s brother, Sleep.”
All quotes are Homer. The Iliad (p. 335). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.