Io

IO, daughter of the River-god Inachus, was a priestess of Argive Hera. Zeus, over whom Iynx, daughter of Pan and Echo, had cast a spell, fell in love with Io, and when Hera charged him with infidelity and turned Iynx into a wryneck as a punishment, he lied: ‘I have never touched Io’. He then turned her into a white cow, which Hera claimed as hers and handed over for safe keeping to Argus Panoptes, ordering him: ‘Tether this beast secretly to an olive- tree at Nemea.’ But Zeus sent Hermes to fetch her back, and himself led the way to Nemea- or, some say, to Mycenae-dressed in woodpecker disguise. Hermes, though the cleverest of thieves, knew that he could not steal Io without being detected by one of Argus’s hundred eyes; he therefore charmed him asleep by playing the flute, crushed him with a boulder, cut off his head, and released Io. Hera, having placed Argus’s eyes in the tail of her peacock, as a constant reminder of his foul murder, set a gadfly to sting Io and chase her all over the world.

b. Io first went to Dodona, and presently reached the sea called the Ionian after her, but there turned Back and travelled north to Mount Haemus and then, by way of the Danube’s delta, coursed sun-wise around the Black Sea, crossing the Crimean Bosphorus, and following the River Hybristes to its source in the Caucasus, where Prometheus still languished on his rock. She regained Europe by way of Colchis, the land of the Chalybes, and the Thracian Bosphorus; then away she galloped through Asia Minor to Tarsus and Joppa, thence to Media, Bactria, and India and, passing south-westward through Arabia, across the Indian Bosphorus [the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb], reached Ethiopia. Thence she travelled down from the sources of the Nile, where the pygmies make perpetual war with the cranes, and found rest at last in Egypt. There Zeus restored her to human form and, having married Telegonus, she gave birth to Epaphus-her son by Zeus, who had touched her to some purpose-and founded the worship of Isis, as she called Demeter. Epaphus, who was rumoured to be the divine bull Apis, reigned over Egypt, and had a daughter, Libya, the mother by Poseidon of Agenor and Belus.
c. But some believe that Io bore Epaphus in an Euboean cave called Boösaule, and afterwards died there from the sting of the gadfly; and that, as a cow, she changed her colour from white to violet-red, and from violet-red to black.
d. Others have a quite different story to tell. They say that Inachus, a son of Iapetus, ruled over Argos, and founded the city of Iopolis-for Io is the name by which the moon was once worshipped at Argos-and called his daughter Io in honour of the moon. Zeus Picus, King of the West, sent his servants to carry off Io, and outraged her as soon as she reached his palace. After bearing him a daughter named Libya, Io fled to Egypt, but found that Hermes, son of Zeus, was reigning there; so continued her flight to Mount Silpium in Syria, where she died of grief and shame. Inachus then sent Io’s brothers and kinsfolk in search of her, warning them not to return empty-handed. With Triptolemus for their guide, they knocked on every door in Syria, crying: ‘May the spirit of Io find rest!’; until at last they reached Mount Silpium, where a phantasmal cow addressed them with: ‘Here am I, Io.’ They decided that Io must have been buried on that spot, and therefore founded a second Iopolis, now called Antioch. In honour of Io, the Iopolitans knock at one another’s doors in the same way every year, using the same cry; and the Argives mourn annually for her.
1. This myth consists of several strands. The Argives worshipped the moon as a cow, because the horned new moon was regarded as the source of all water, and therefore of cattle fodder. Her three colours: white for the new moon, red for the harvest moon, black for the moon when it waned, represented the three ages of the Moon-goddess-Maiden, Nymph, and Crone. Io changed her colour, as the moon changes, but for ‘red’ the mythographer substitutes ‘violet’ because ion is Greek for the violet flower. Woodpeckers were thought to be knocking for rain when they tapped on oak-trunks; and Io was the Moon as rain bringer. The herdsmen needed rain most pressingly in late summer when gadflies attacked their cattle and sent them frantic; in Africa cattle-owning Negro tribes still hurry from pasture to pasture when attacked by them. Io’s Argive priestesses seem to have performed annual heifer-dance in which they pretended to be driven mad by gadflies, while woodpecker-men, tapping on oak-doors and crying ‘Io! Io!’, invited the rain to fall and relieve their torments. This seems to the origin of the myth of the Coan women who were turned into cows. Argive colonies founded in Euboea, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, Syria, and Egypt, took their rain-making dance with them. The wryneck, the Moon-goddess’s prime orgiastic bird, nests in willows and was therefore concerned with water-magic

2. The legend invented to account for the eastward spread of this ritual, as well as the similarity between the worship of Io in Greece, Isis in Egypt, Astarte in Syria, and Kali in India, has been grafted on the unrelated stories: that of the holy moon-cow wandering around the heavens, guarded by the stars-there is a cognate Irish legend of ‘Green Stripper’-and that of the Moon-priestesses whom the leaders of the invading Hellenes, each calling himself Zeus, violated to the dish of the local population. Hera, as Zeus’s wife, is then made to  expand jealousy of Io, though Io was another name for ‘cow-eyed’ Hera. Demeter’s mourning for Persephone is recalled in the Argive festival of mourning for Io, since Io has been equated in the myth with Demeter. Moreover, every three years Demeter’s Mysteries were celebrated in Celeae (‘calling’), near Corinth, and said to have been founded by a brother of Celeus (‘woodpecker’), King of Eleusis. Hermes is called the son of Zeus Picus (‘woodpecker’)- Aristophanes in his Birds accuses Zeus of stealing the woodpecker’s sceptre-as Pan is said to have been Hermes’s son by the Nymph Dryope (‘woodpecker’); and Faunus, the Latin Pan, was the son of Picus (‘woodpecker’) whom Circe turned into a woodpecker for spurning her love (Ovid: Metamorphoses). Faunus’s Cretan tomb bore the epitaph: ‘Here lies the woodpecker who was also Zeus’ (Suidas sub Picos). All three are rain-making shepherd-gods. Libya’s name denotes rain, and the winter rains came to Greece from the direction of Libya.
3. Zeus’s fathering of Epaphus, who became the ancestor of Libya, Agenor, Belus, Aegyptus, and Danaus, implies that the Zeus-worshipping Achaeans claimed sovereignty over all the sea-peoples of the southeastern Mediterranean.
4. The myth of pygmies and cranes seems to concern the tall cattle-breeding tribesmen who had broken into the upper Nile-valley from Somaliland and driven the native pygmies southward. They were called ‘cranes’ because, then as now, they would stand for long periods on one leg, holding the ankle of the other with the opposite hand, and leaning on a spear.