Discovering Jupiter with Io'' by
Pieter Lastman|left
Io and Zeus Io was a priestess of the goddess
Hera in
Argos, In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Zeus pursues a fleeing Io through the Lycrean country, throwing a mantle of darkness over the earth, and then raped her. According to some stories, Zeus then turned Io into a
heifer in order to hide her from his wife; In the version of the story in which Zeus transformed Io, the deception failed, and Hera begged Zeus to give her the heifer as a present, which, having no reason to refuse, he did. Pitying the unfortunate girl,
Gaia, the goddess of the earth, created the
violet (), so the cow could eat, thus growing "from her from whom it has its name". The various colours of the violet (red, purple, white) changed on account of Io's life, red for the blushing maiden, purple for the cow, white for the stars. Hera then sent
Argus Panoptes, a giant who had 100 eyes, to watch Io and prevent Zeus from visiting her, and so Zeus sent
Hermes to distract and eventually slay Argus. According to Ovid, he did so by first lulling him to sleep by playing the panpipes and telling stories. Zeus freed Io, still in the form of a heifer. In some myths, Hera uses Argus' eyes to decorate her peacock's feathers to thank the giant for his help. with the head of Io, 4th century BCE (Brindisi, Museo archeologico Francesco Ribezzo) In order to exact her revenge, Hera sent a
gadfly to sting Io continuously, driving her to wander the world without rest. Io eventually crossed the path between the
Propontis and the
Black Sea, which thus acquired the name
Bosporus (meaning
ox passage), where she met
Prometheus, who had been chained on Mt.
Caucasus by Zeus. Prometheus comforted Io with the information that she would be restored to human form and become the ancestress of the greatest of all heroes,
Heracles (Hercules). Io escaped across the
Ionian Sea to
Egypt, where she was restored to human form by Zeus. There, she gave birth to Zeus's son
Epaphus, and a daughter as well,
Keroessa. She later married Egyptian king Telegonus. Their grandson, Danaus, eventually returned to Greece with his fifty daughters (the
Danaids), as recalled in
Aeschylus' play
The Suppliants. The myth of Io must have been well known to
Homer, who often calls Hermes
Argeiphontes, which is often translated as "Argus-slayer", though this interpretation is disputed by
Robert Beekes.
Walter Burkert notes that the story of Io was told in the ancient epic tradition at least four times of which we have traces: in the
Danais, in the
Phoronis—
Phoroneus founded the cult of Hera, according to Hyginus'
Fabulae 274 and 143—in a fragment of the Hesiodic
Aigimios, as well as in similarly fragmentary Hesiodic
Catalogue of Women. A mourning commemoration of Io was observed at the
Heraion of Argos into classical times. The ancients connected Io with the Moon, and in
Aeschylus'
Prometheus Bound, where Io encounters Prometheus, she refers to herself as "the horned virgin". From her relationship with Phoroneus, as sister (or descendant), Io is sometimes called Phoronis. According to the
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by
William Smith, Io at some point landed at
Damalis, and the
Chalcedonians erected a bronze cow on the spot.
Io as Isis {{Multiple image Lygdus and his wife,
Telethusa, were a poor couple living in
Crete. When Telethusa becomes pregnant, her husband tells her that they cannot afford to have a daughter, and that they have no other option than to kill the child if it is a daughter. Eight months later Io, later in the story mentioned as
Isis, comes in a vision to Telethusa telling her that she should keep her daughter when it is born and must tell her husband that it is a boy named
Iphis. Later in the story, Isis (Io) changes Iphis' sex when she is supposed to marry her fiancée, Ianthe. == Gallery ==