Io (mythology)

See also: Io

In the Greek Mythology, Io (in Greek old Ίώ / Iố ) is the girl (or at least the downward one in right-hand side line, Hésiode naming it " girl of Piren " in its Catalog of the women) of the god river Inachos. She has a sister, Mycénée.

Priestess with the temple of Héra to Argos, Zeus noticed it one day and it quickly became one as of its many mistresses. Zeus gave him frequent appointments while changing into cloud. Their relation continued until Héra, has the wife of Zeus, them almost surprised. Zeus managed to escape this situation by transforming Io into beautiful a white Génisse. However, Héra was not easily deceived and required of Zeus that it give him the heifer like present.

Once Io was given to Héra, Zeus continued all the same to meet her in hiding-place, from time to time, while changing into bull. Then Héra entrusted it to the guard Argos ( Argos Panoptes , “that which sees all”) so that it maintains it well off Zeus. Argos was a Géant equipped with one hundred eyes, of which fifty slept in turn while the others took care. Zeus then required of his/her son Hermes to kill Argos.

Hermes went to find Argos and managed to deaden it by telling him a very long history accompanied by the sound of its toothing-stone. When Argos ends up falling asleep, Hermes cut the head to him. To honor its memory, Héra recovered its eyes and made use of it to furnish the tail with its favorite animal, a Paon. And to be avenged, it sent on Io a horsefly charged to prick it unceasingly. This one, thrown into a panic and made furious, flees and traversed many countries. In its escape, it met Prométhée connected on the mount the Caucasus, which revealed to him that one day it would find its human form and would become the ancestor of a large hero (Héraclès) to which itself would owe his own release later.

It left also its name with the Ionian Mer and the Détroit of the the Bosphorus ( the ford of the cow ), and ends up reaching the Egypt where Zeus returned its shape first of young woman to him and where it gave rise to their son Épaphos. It was it which propagated in its new fatherland the worship of Déméter, that it called Isis, also, in Egypt, Io it is identified with Isis or Hathor and Épaphos with Apis (ref.: Greek Myths, by Robert Low registers, in particular quoting Tzétzès with Lycophron).

Sources

(I, 568 and suiv.).

External bond

Random links:

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