Goddess of childbirth, daughter of Zeus and Hera, born alongside Hebe and Ares; no child can come into the light until she arrives, which made her the instrument of Hera's spite when the queen held her back to delay Alcmene's labour and rob Heracles of his birthright.1
Eileithyia is the goddess who presides over the moment of birth. Hesiod names her among the children Hera, joined in love with the king of gods and men, brought forth — Hebe and Ares and Eileithyia — and Apollodorus likewise records that Zeus wedded Hera and begat Hebe, Ilithyia and Ares, so that across both genealogies she is a true Olympian daughter of the king and queen together. Homer calls her simply 'the goddess of childbirth' and makes her power absolute: until she comes, no mortal can be born.2
Her most famous act is one of cruelty done at another's bidding. When Zeus boasted that on that day Eileithyia would bring to the light a man of his own blood who would rule over all his neighbours, Hera bound him to the rash oath, then sped to Argos, where she hastened the birth of Eurystheus son of Sthenelus before his term — and stayed Alcmene's bearing, holding back the Eileithyiae, so that Heracles came too late for the destined kingship. Apollodorus tells the same: out of jealousy Hera persuaded the Ilithyiai to retard Alcmena's delivery and contrived that Eurystheus be born a seven-month child.3
Where the older sources keep her single, Homer can also speak of the Eileithyiai in the plural — the goddesses of childbirth, the daughters of Hera who have bitter pangs in their keeping — as several powers rather than one, an ambiguity Apollodorus echoes when Hera persuades 'the Ilithyiai' to delay Alcmene. The Roman poets fold the goddess into Lucina, whom Ovid invokes throughout: Alcmene names Ilithyia, set over frightened mothers in travail, as the goddess Juno's hatred turned against her, sitting cross-legged with locked knees at the door to bind the birth, and Lucina is the help cried out for in the labours of Myrrha and of Telethusa.4
Pausanias records her cult as ancient and far-travelled: they say Eileithyia came from the Hyperboreans to Delos and there helped Leto in her own labour, and from Delos her name spread to other peoples, the Delians sacrificing to her with a hymn of Olen. The Cretans held instead that she was born at Amnisus — Homer's Odyssey already knows the cave of Eilithyia in that difficult Cretan harbour — and her sanctuaries stood across the Peloponnese, at Olympia she was surnamed Olympian, while her image at Aegium held a torch in one hand, for the pangs of women are like fire and it is she who brings children to the light.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
