Io's Story

A young priestess has harrowing adventures

In the land of Argos there was a river-god named Inachus, who had a beautiful daughter named Io.  Inachus was the first to build a temple to Hera in Argos, and in gratitude, Hera appointed his daughter to be her priestess.

Soon after assuming her duties, Io began to have alarming dreams.  Zeus appeared to her each night in his favorite guise: a majestic man with sensuous lips and dark hair that curled over his broad brow.

‘Child,’ he said, ‘why do you leave the flower of your beauty unplucked, when you could enjoy the most spectacular union of all with the king of the gods?  Leave my wife’s cold marble temple and come to the meadows of Lerna, where your father pastures his herds and where my desire for you will be fulfilled.’

Already in her dreams, Zeus’ urgent fingers seemed to caress Io.  Deeply troubled, she finally went to her father for advice.  Inachus sent envoys to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi and Zeus’ own oracle at Dodona, asking them what to do.  Each told Inachus to relinquish his daughter to Zeus, and added that if he didn’t, Zeus would strike Argos with lightning, incinerating the city and all its people.

Weeping, Inachus cast Io out of his house.  Her feet, as if of their own accord, carried her to Lerna’s meadows where Zeus made love to her each night.  Io never saw him—he always arrived wrapped in dark clouds, in which he enveloped her as well, in hopes of escaping Hera’s notice—but within the clammy mist she could feel his fingers and lips pressing upon her flesh, and his loins thrusting between her legs.

But it is not possible to elude a god forever.  One night while he was making love to Io, Zeus saw his wife’s hands begin to part the clouds.  Panicking, he did the first thing he thought of: surrounded as he was by Inachus’ herds, he transformed Io into a heifer.  

‘Why Zeus,’ said Hera, after she had penetrated to the center of the clouds, ‘what are you doing with this beautiful heifer?  Pure white—not a brown hair upon her body!  And with horns that curve like the crescent moon.  You know how much I love cows—will you give me this one?’

Hera knew full well who the heifer really was, and Zeus knew that Hera knew, but he was trapped, and so Io became Hera’s possession.  To make sure that Zeus could not rescue her, Hera set an indomitable watchman: Argus, a son of Earth who had 100 bright blue eyes scattered all about his body.  Some eyes slept at some times and other eyes slept at other times, but they were never all asleep at the same time.

Day after day,* Io languished in the meadows.   When the rainy season arrived, the meadows turned into marshes.  The water rose above her hooves and she trembled at the sound of snakes hissing nearby when she lay down in the mud to rest each night. 

Eventually, Io wandered back towards her home and Argus followed in her wake.  One day, she spotted her father and sisters.  Trotting over, she offered them her beautiful white coat to stroke.  Then, with a clumsy hoof that had once been her lovely pink fingers, she traced the letters I and O over and over again in the dirt, until they understood that she was Io.  They wailed with grief but could offer no help.

The months passed.  Finally, as summer’s heat arrived, Zeus came up with a plan that he hoped would relieve Io’s distress.  He sent Hermes, disguised as a cowherd, down to where Argus lounged in the shade of a tree.  Hermes befriended Argus and soon had him enthralled by the marvelous stories he told.  Then, as the sun was setting, Hermes took out his pipes and played on them softly.  One by one, Argus’ eyes winked shut; by moonrise, all of them were closed.  With a snap of his fingers, Hermes conjured a scimitar out of the air and lopped off Argus’ head.   

Hera immediately sensed that something was wrong.  Flying down to the meadow, she discovered Argus’ corpse.   Carefully, she pried open each of his eyelids and plucked from their sockets his beautiful eyes.  She attached them to the tail of her pet peacock and ever since then, peacocks have displayed the eyes of Argus.

But Hera also did something else, before Zeus could arrive and carry Io away.  Summoning Argus’ ghost, she turned it into a gadfly and ordered it to torture the poor cow.  The fly mercilessly pierced Io’s flesh with its razor-sharp mandibles, driving her mad with pain.

 Desperate to escape, Io ran through the world, never knowing where the fly might chase her next.  She travelled west to Dodona and skirted the coast of a sea that took on her name, ‘Ionian.’  She veered north to the land of the gold-hoarding griffins and their enemies, the one-eyed Arismaspians.  Eventually she found herself scrabbling among the Caucasus Mountains, where she found Prometheus, still hanging on his cliff. 

Prometheus told Io that she would make many more arduous journeys before she could rest.   She would be driven further east to the land of the Scythians, a fierce race, and then south to the Amazons, who, hating all males, would pity her and guide her across the strait that would become known as the cow’s crossing: ‘Bosphorus.’  After the gadfly chased her eastward once more, through the arid lands near the sun’s rising, she would reverse her course and travel west to the mouth of the Nile.  Following it north until it opened into the sea, she would again encounter Zeus.  

Zeus, said Prometheus, would touch Io again, but this time with a gentle hand, restoring her human shape.  She would bear him a son, whom she would name Epaphus, meaning ‘born from a touch.’  From the children and grandchildren of Epaphus would descend Europa, Cadmus, Dionysus, Perseus and Heracles—the last of whom would one day kill the eagle that tortured Prometheus each day, freeing him from his agony.  Io would be remembered ever after as the foremother of all these descendants and many more.  

And so it all happened, just as Prometheus predicted.  

When Zeus restored Io’s human shape, she retained her lovely crescent horns. The Egyptians, who witnessed this wonder, recognized by her horns that she who had once been Inachus’ daughter was now their own goddess Isis, come to earth, carrying the moon on her head.