In Greek mythology, Io (; ) was one of the mortal lovers of Zeus. An Argive princess, her descendants included Perseus, Cadmus, Heracles, Minos, Lynceus, Cepheus, Dionysus, and Danaus. The astronomer Simon Marius named a moon of Jupiter after Io in 1614. The Ionian Islands are also named after Io (not to be confused with the ancient region of Ionia which was named after Ion).
Because her brother was Phoroneus, Io is also known as Phoronis (an adjective form of Phoroneus: "Phoronean"). She was sometimes compared to the Egyptian goddess Isis, whereas her Egyptian husband Telegonus was Osiris. Summary/translation: "The term patronymic was expanded even further to include those named after a sibling, such as Phoronis to mean Isis, the sister of Phoroneus."
Family In most versions of the legend, Io was the daughter of the river god Inachus,Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 590; Apollodorus, 2.1.3; Herodotus, 1.1; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.583; Pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 10, p. 123, l. 41 though various other purported genealogies are also known. If her father was Inachus, then her mother would presumably have been Inachus's wife (and sister), the Oceanid nymph Melia, daughter of Oceanus. She had the patronymic Inachis (Ἰναχίς) as daughter of Inachus.Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Inachus
Io's father was called Peiren in the Catalogue of Women,Catalogue of Women. fr. 124 and by Acusilaus,Apollodorus, 2.1.3; Acusilaus, fr.12 possibly a son of the elder Argus, also known as Peiras, Peiranthus or Peirasus.M.L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins (Oxford, 1985) 77Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.1.3; Hyginus, Fabulae, 124. Io may therefore be identical to Callithyia, daughter of Peiranthus, as is suggested by Hesychius of Alexandria.Hesychius of Alexandria s. v.
The 2nd century AD geographer Pausanias mentions another, later Io, descendant of Phoroneus, daughter of Iasus,Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.16.1 who himself was the son of Argus and Ismene, the daughter of Asopus,Apollodorus, 2.1.3. or of Triopas and Sosis; Io's mother in the latter case was Leucane.Scholia on Euripides's Orestes, 932
Mythology
Io and Zeus Io was a priestess of the goddess Hera in Argos, whose cult her father Inachus was supposed to have introduced to Argos. Zeus noticed Io, a mortal woman, and lusted after her. In the version of the myth told in Prometheus Bound she initially rejected Zeus's advances, until her father threw her out of his house on the advice of oracles. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Zeus pursues a fleeing Io through the Lycrean country, throwing a mantle of darkness over the earth, and then rapes her. According to some stories, Zeus then turned Io into a heifer in order to hide her from his wife; others maintain that Hera herself transformed Io.Aeschylus, Suppliants, 291–9 (pp. 324, 325).
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.Geoponica 6.22Severus, Narrations 1 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.Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.650-730 Zeus freed Io, still in the form of a heifer. In some myths, Hera uses Argus's eyes to decorate her peacock's feathers to thank the giant for his help.
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 EpaphusPseudo-Clement, Recognitions 10,p. 123, ll. 41–42, 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's 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 BurkertBurkert, Homo Necans (1974) 1983:164 note 14, giving bibliography. 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's 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,Eustathius of Thessalonica commentary on Dionysius Periegetes, 92; the Byzantine encyclopedia Suda s.v. "Io", Hesychius, s.v. "Io". and in Aeschylus's 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.Tsagalis, p. 409, Peck, p. 200; e.g. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.668, 2.524.
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.A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, DamalisThe source wrongly quotes Symeon Mag. de Constant. Porphyr. p. 729, ed. Bonn; comp. Plb. 5.43. As a source but it is actually Plb.4.43.)
Io as Isis
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's sex when she is supposed to marry her fiancée, Ianthe.
Gallery
Notes
References
Bibliography Aeschylus, Suppliants in Persians. Seven against Thebes. Suppliants. Prometheus Bound, edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, Loeb Classical Library No. 145, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2009. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S., in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume I: Books 1-8. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 42. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1916. Online version at Harvard University Press. Peck, William Thane (editor), The First and Second Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ginn & Company, 1900. Tsagalis, Christos, Early Greek Epic Fragments I: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2017.
External links
Theoi.com: Io: naiad nymph of Argolis and Egypt Assembles the essential references in Greek and Latin literature, in translation. Io engravings by Goltzius from the De Verda collection Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 250 images of Io and Argus)