Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

As Athena and Poseidon once contested Attica, so Hera and Poseidon contested the Argolid. Pausanias reports the Argive tradition: the judges were the river-gods Inachus, Cephisus, and Asterion (or Inachus alone in leaner notices). They awarded the land to Hera. Poseidon, in anger, dried up their streams—so that Inachus and his fellows run full only after rain—or withdrew the sea’s favor from the coast. Argos became Hera’s city par excellence: her sanctuary at the Heraion dominated the plain; the land called itself hers. Apollodorus’s Argive book presupposes the same divine politics: Io’s line and the Danaids move under Hera’s jealous eye and Poseidon’s ambivalent gifts (Amymone’s spring is a later local thaw of his wrath). The contest explains cult geography—why Argos is Hera’s as Athens is Athena’s—and why Argive rivers are seasonal: the losing sea-god’s curse still shapes the plain. Unlike the Attic tale, no olive or salt-spring token is central; the verdict of the rivers and Poseidon’s hydrological revenge carry the aetiology.