Hymn to Hera and Zeus

Hera here is air, and the whole hymn is about that.

Ἠερόμορφε — air-shaped; κεκραμένη ἠέρι σεμνῷ — mingled with the holy air; mother of rains, nurse of winds. No marriage, no jealousy, no Olympian quarrels: the goddess is identified with an element and described through its operations.

The ground of the identification is a likeness of sound: Hēra and aēr consist of the same letters, and ancient interpreters, from the allegorists to the Stoics, derived one from the other. A whole theology is built on a transposition of letters, and in antiquity that counted as an argument, not a game.

Χωρὶς γὰρ σέθεν οὐδὲν ὅλως ζωῆς φύσιν ἔγνω — for without you nothing at all has known the nature of life. Of air this is literally true, and Hera turns out to be the condition of breathing.

Compare the Homeric hymn to the same goddess (homeric-hera-001): there she is defined by kinship alone — daughter of Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus, honoured equally with him — and does nothing. Two hymns to one deity, and the Orphic one gives her exactly what the Homeric denies her: something to do.