Athena may be worshipped and represented as goddess of Victory or of Health; but here, too, it is usually some recognised state cult that underlies the representation.

Outside Athens we find the same conditions.

To take only one instance, the colossal gold and ivory Hera of Argos, made by the chief Argive master Polyclitus, is the great goddess of the city, just as Athena is of Athens.

She was represented as the bride of Zeus, who annually renewed her maidenhood at the great Argive festival of the divine marriage; and we cannot doubt that Polyclitus expressed in this statue, which was hardly less famous than the masterpieces of Phidias, all the essential features of the great religious ideals that underlay this primitive rite.

His Hera had neither the warlike nor the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of the Attic Athena; but she was the goddess of womanly grace and beauty in the bride, and embodied that perfection of physical form which Argive art sought also in its athletic figures, and which was in a sense a part of the religion that found expression in the great athletic games.