Hera, the queen of Olympus, is at once both sister and wife of Zeus; they are the only wedded pair on Olympus. She belongs, however, distinctly to the second class of Olympians. She takes no part in the Odyssey; and in the Iliad, although she favors the Achaeans most vehemently, she is less active than Athena. In character she is a good deal of a scold, so that Zeus fears her jealous anger.[22] He knows that she is accustomed to block his plans, although on one occasion he had punished her by stringing her up by the wrists and tying anvils to her feet! Of this he indignantly reminds her: “Dost thou not remember when I strung thee up aloft and from thy feet I hung two anvils, and round thy wrists I bound a golden bond unbreakable? And thou wast hung in the upper air and the clouds. Wroth were the gods throughout high Olympus, but still they could not approach and free thee.”[23] Again he had beaten her, and when Hephaestus tried to intervene, Zeus seized the meddler by the foot and threw him out of Olympus. Hephaestus himself recalls the experience: “All the day long I fell and at setting of the sun I dropped in Lemnos, and there was little life left in me.”[24] Athena is above all the goddess of war, and she plays a large part in both the Iliad and Odyssey. In the latter poem she is the special guardian of Odysseus, whose ready mind wins her admiration. She is also the most skilled of all divinities, the patroness of every handicraft.[25] She is perhaps the chief divinity of Troy; on the Trojan citadel stands her temple to which the noble matrons bring a gift of a beautiful robe with the promise of generous sacrifice if the goddess will give them her protection against Diomedes.[26] She also has a home on the acropolis at Athens.[27] Apollo, the archer god, is a patron of war and of bowmen. In the Iliad he is a violent enemy of the Achaeans and gives most effective aid to the Trojans; but in the Odyssey he plays no active part. He also inspires seers and prophets; and he is the god of the lyre and the teacher of bards. In prayers he is named with Zeus and Athena when an object is most earnestly desired.[28] These three are the greatest of the Homeric divinities, although there is no close connection among them. Apollo’s virgin sister, Artemis, plays a part much inferior to that of her brother, but in many ways she is similar to him. Her arrows bring a quick and peaceful end to women as Apollo’s do to men. In the chase she is preëminent: she is the fair goddess of wood and mountain. Ares and Aphrodite also belong to a lower rank. In function they are limited to an appeal to a single passion each, Ares to rage for slaughter, Aphrodite to the passion of love. They are both treated with a certain contempt and are mocked by the other gods.