Maddening one…you and your eternal suspicions –
I can never escape you. Ah but tell me, Hera,
just what can you do about all this? Nothing.
Only estrange yourself from me a little more –
and all the worse for you.
If what you say is true, that must be my pleasure.
Now go sit down. Be quiet now. Obey my orders,
for fear the gods, however many Olympus holds,
are powerless to protect you when I come
to throttle you with my irresistible hands.
– Homer
The Iliad, Book 1, lines 674-683. When Hera continues to taunt Zeus with what she knows about his pact with Thetis to help the Trojans, he orders her to be silent and threatens her with violence. The quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, mediated by the elder Nestor, is paralleled in heaven with the quarrel between Zeus and Hera, mediated by Hera’s son Hephaestus.