Hebe ("youthful bloom") was the daughter of Zeus and Hera, the cupbearer of the gods, who poured the nectar at the Olympian feasts before this office passed (in some traditions) to Ganymede the abducted Trojan prince. She was the personification of youth in its early bloom, and her name became a poetic byword for that quality. After the death and apotheosis of Heracles, when the hero was admitted to Olympus and reconciled at last with his persecutor Hera, Hebe was given to him as wife — the eternal youth becoming the bride of the eternal hero, a symbolic union much remarked in later mythography.
Before thisPersephone
Next on the wallEileithyia
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 922; Homer, Iliad 4.2 (Hebe pouring nectar); Apollodorus 2.7.7 (the marriage to Heracles). Hebe's cult was modest; she was honored at Phlius in Argolis, where her sanctuary had a notable asylum-tradition (escaped slaves who reached it were freed). Her Roman counterpart was Juventas.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofZeusthe daughter of Zeus and Hera, the cupbearer of the gods
Child ofHerathe daughter of Zeus and Hera, the cupbearer of the gods
Consort ofHeraclesHebe was given to him as wife
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Sea, the Wild and the Wind. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.