Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge is a Professor at the Collège de France after having been a researcher at the F.N.R.S. (Belgium) and taught at the Université de Liège. She is also the author of L'Aphrodite grecque (1994), Retour à la source. Pausanias et la religion grecque (2008), and Le Polythéisme grec à l'épreuve d'Hérodote (2020).

Preface by Fritz Graf; Introduction; Chapter I. On Olympus: Conjugal Bed and Royal Throne: 1. A kind of overture: Hera's characteristic epithets; 2. Ultimate spouse; 2.1. 'Sister and wife': family affairs; 2.2. The supreme beauty of the divine spouse; 2.3. Dios apat¿ and the erotic power of parthenia; 2.4. Marriage and sovereignty; 3. Intimate enemy; 3.1. The sovereign queen, eris and cholos; 3.2. In the midst of the battle: the mother of Ares; 3.3. The play of eris and the place of the queen; 4. Hera, between childbirth and filiation; 4.1. The problematic status of Hephaistos; 4.2. The mother of Eileithyia in action; 4.3. From the labour of Eileithyia to the filiation; 4.4. The jealousy of Hera and the children of Zeus; 5. The lineage and the nurse; 6. The queen's ultimate challenge: on the traces of a lost hymn? 6.1. The text; 6.2. From the wrath of Hera to a cosmic crisis; 6.3. The return of order and constructive eris; 6.4. From the intimate enemy to the ultimate spouse; 7. The Hera of Zeus in archaic poetry; Chapter 2. In the cities: Teleia and Basileia; 1. As a prelude: exclusive cult-titles; 2. Stymphalus and the Hera-cycle; 3. The Daidala of Plataia; 3.1. The goddess of Kithairon; 3.2. The narratives and the cycle; 3.3 The procession and the sacrifice; 3.4 Marriage, sovereignty, reconciliation; 4. The Goddess of Argos in her dwelling; 4.1. The Goddess of Argos, the Argive plain, and the city of Argos; 4.2. The traces of the cycle about the goddess between myths and rites; 4.3. Veils of marriage and a veiled marriage; 4.4. The sceptre, the cuckoo, the throne; 4.5. Hera and the sovereignty of Zeus; 5. The sovereign bride of Samos; 5.1. A grandiose temple in the middle of the Aegean; 5.2. In the shadow of the chastetree: birth, parthenia, separation, and return; 5.3. 'The glorious young bride of Zeus, queen of the island'; 5.4. Mistress of the island, offerings and donors; 6. From Olympus to Olympia; 6.1. Heaven on earth; 6.2 The archaic temple at the heart of the Altis; 6.3. Hera at the centre of the Olympian pantheon: the monuments; 6.4. Hera in the heart of the Olympian pantheon: taking control of the theogony; 6.5. The power of sovereignty: Olympios/Olympia; 6.6. The conjugal bed and the throne: Pelops and Hippodamia; 6.7. Competition, "synecism" and marriage: the H¿raia; 6.8. Return to the Heraion; 7. The Hera of Zeus and the Zeus of Hera; 7.1 Powers of accomplishment: Teleios-Teleia; 7.2. At Athens a hieros gamos and some sacrificial precautions; 8. The sovereign Queen: cult-title, ritual and topography; 8.1. When she is the 'Queen'; 8.2. Ascending toward the Kynthos at Delos; 8.3. The Basileia of Lesbos: new information from Sappho; 8.4. Hera at Perachora and the Bounaia of Corinth; 8.5. The sovereign queen of the Achaeans in the West; 9. From the city-cults to Olympus: return to Dios apat¿; Chapter 3. From anger to glory: testing and legitimising: 1. Cholos: profiling an angry goddess; 2. Gaining access to Olympus; 3. Herakles, Hera and kleos; 3.1. The glory of Hera, glory by way of Hera; 3.2. 'Now she loves him...'; 3.3. Monster and trials; 3.4. Legitimation, wet-nursing, and marriage; 3.5. Hebe, daughter of Hera, and the h¿b¿; 4. Dionysus, 'the god who arrives...' on Olympus; 4.1. From the anger of the wife to the immortality of the son; 4.2. The throne of the queen: integration and re-integration; 4.3. Constructive antagonisms; 5. The fabrication of Olympus in images; 5.1. 'As if she were her daughter, too...'; 5.2. The wife of Zeus vis-à-vis Dionysus; 6. Heroic stakes and the crises of sovereignty; 6.1. From Laius to Oedipus; 6.2. From Pelias to Jason; 6.2.1. The kleos of the Argonauts; 6.2.2. The hybris of Pelias; Envoi.