While her husband had brought one of the greatest goddesses of the pantheon out of his head, Hera’s son was born disfigured and lame. Zeus and Hera’s SonsĪncient writers disagreed on whether Hephaestus was Zeus’s son or had been born to Hera alone.Īccording to some legends Hera was so upset at the motherless birth of Athena that she endeavoured to have a child of her own without Zeus’s involvement. While Zeus had two sons with his lawful wife, neither was as well-loved or attended to as his other children. Ares was belligerent and warlike to the point that Zeus himself called him the most hateful of all the gods. Hephaestus was lame and his deformity reflected poorly on the whole of Olympus. Neither of these sons was well-liked by their father. They had, according to different sources, either one or two sons. Zeus and Hera were the parents of a handful of minor goddesses. She was also angry that Zeus often seemed to prefer the children he had with other women, even the human ones, over her own children. Hera was not just jealous because her husband was unfaithful, however. Hera was constantly jealous of the women her husband loved and the children they gave birth to. The marriage of Zeus and Hera was famously strained by the god’s many affairs and illegitimate children.