PROMETHEUS AND IO

The materials for this story are taken from two poets, the Greek Aeschylus and the Roman Ovid,
separated from each other by four hundred and fifty years and still more by their gifts and
temperaments. They are the best sources for the tale. It is easy to distinguish the parts told by
each, Aeschylus grave and direct, Ovid light and amusing. The touch about lovers’ lies is
characteristic of Ovid, as also the little story about Syrinx.

In those days when Prometheus had just given fire to men and when he was first bound to the
rocky peak on Caucasus, he had a strange visitor. A distracted fleeing creature came clambering
awkwardly up over the cliffs and crags to where he lay. It looked like a heifer, but talked like a
girl who seemed mad with misery. The sight of Prometheus stopped her short. She cried,

This that I see—

A form storm-beaten,
Bound to the rock.
Did you do wrong?
Is this your punishment?
Where am I? Speak to a wretched wanderer.
Enough—I have been tried enough—
My wandering—long wandering.
Yet I have found nowhere
To leave my misery.
I am a girl who speak to you,
But horns are on my head.
Prometheus recognized her. He knew her story and he spoke her name.

I know you, girl, Inachus’ daughter, Io.

You made the god’s heart hot with love
And Hera hates you. She it is
Who drives you on this flight that never ends.
Wonder checked Io’s frenzy. She stood still, all amazed.
Her name—spoken by this strange being in this strange, lonely place! She begged,
Who are you, sufferer, that speak the truth
To one who suffers?

And he answered,
You see Prometheus who gave mortals fire.

She knew him, then, and his story.

You—he who succored the whole race of men?
You, that Prometheus, the daring, the enduring?

They talked freely to each other. He told her how Zeus had treated him, and she told him that
Zeus was the reason why she, once a princess and a happy girl, had been changed into.
 A beast, a starving beast,
That frenzied runs with clumsy leaps and bounds.
Oh, shame…
Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera, was the direct cause of her misfortunes, but back of them all was
Zeus himself. He fell in love with her, and sent
Ever to my maiden chamber
Visions of the night
Persuading me with gentle words:
“O happy, happy girl,
Why are you all too long a maid?
The arrow of desire has pierced Zeus.
For you he is on fire. With you it is his will to capture love.”
Always, each night, such dreams possessed me.

But still greater than Zeus’s love was his fear of Hera’s jealousy. He acted, however, with
very little wisdom for the Father of Gods and Men when he tried to hide Io and himself by
wrapping the earth in a cloud so thick and dark that a sudden night seemed to drive the clear
daylight away. Hera knew perfectly well that there was a reason for this odd occurrence, and
instantly suspected her husband. When she could not find him anywhere in heaven she glided
swiftly down to the earth and ordered the cloud off. But Zeus too had been quick. As she down
to the earth and ordered the cloud off. But Zeus too had been quick. As she caught sight of him
he was standing beside a most lovely white heifer—Io, of course. He swore that he had never
seen her until just now when she had sprung forth, newborn, from the earth. And this, Ovid says,
shows that the lies lovers tell do not anger the gods. However, it also shows that they are not
very useful, for Hera did not believe a word of it. She said the heifer was very pretty and would
Zeus please make her a present of it. Sorry as he was, he saw at once that to refuse would give
the whole thing away. What excuse could he make? An insignificant little cow… He turned Io
reluctantly over to his wife and Hera knew very well how to keep her away from him.

She gave her into the charge of Argus, an excellent arrangement for Hera’s purpose, since
Argus had a hundred eyes. Before such a watchman, who could sleep with some of the eyes and
keep on guard with the rest, Zeus seemed helpless. He watched Io’s misery, turned into a beast,
driven from her home; he dared not come to her help. At last, however, he went to his son
Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and told him he must find a way to kill Argus. There was no
god cleverer than Hermes. As soon as he had sprung to earth from heaven he laid aside
everything that marked him as a god and approached Argus like a country fellow, playing very
sweetly upon a pipe of reeds. Argus was pleased at the sound and called to the musician to come
nearer. “You might as well sit by me on this rock,” he said, “you see it’s shady—just right for
shepherds.” Nothing could have been better for Hermes’ plan, and yet nothing happened. He
played and then he talked on and on, as drowsily and monotonously as he could; some of the
hundred eyes would go to sleep, but some were always awake. At last, however, one story was
successful—about the god Pan, how he loved a nymph named Syrinx who fled from him and just
as he was about to seize her was turned into a tuft of reeds by her sister nymphs. Pan said, “Still
you shall be mine,” and he made from what she had become.

A shepherd’s pipe
 Of reeds with beeswax joined.

The little story does not seem especially tiresome, as such stories go, but Argus found it
so. All of his eyes went to sleep. Hermes killed him at once, of course, but Hera took the eyes
and set them in the tail of the peacock, her favorite bird.

It seemed then that Io was free, but no; Hera at once turned on her again. She sent a gad-
fly to plague her, which stung her to madness. Io told Prometheus,

He drives me all along the long sea strand.

I may not stop for food or drink.
He will not let me sleep.

Prometheus tried to comfort her, but he could point her only to the distant future. What
lay immediately before her was still more wandering and in fearsome lands. To be sure, the part
of the sea she first ran along in her frenzy would be called Ionian after her, and the Bosphorus,
which means the Ford of the Cow, would preserve the memory of when she went through it, but
her real consolation must be that at long last she would reach the Nile, where Zeus would restore
her to her human form. She would bear him a son named Epaphus, and live forever after happy
and honored. And

Know this, that from your race will spring

One glorious with the bow, bold-hearted,
And he shall set me free.

Io’s descendant would be Hercules, greatest of heroes, than whom hardly the gods were
greater, and to whom Prometheus would owe his freedom.

EUROPA
This story, so like the Renaissance idea of the classical—fantastic, delicately decorated,
bright-colored—is taken entirely from a poem of the third-century Alexandrian poet Moschus, by
far the best account of it.

Io was not the only girl who gained geographical fame because Zeus fell in love with her.
There was another, known far more widely—Europa, the daughter of the King of Sidon. But
whereas the wretched Io had to pay dearly for the distinction, Europa was exceedingly fortunate.
Except for a few moments of terror when she found herself crossing the deep sea on the back of
a bull she did not suffer at all. The story does not say what Hera was about at the time, but it is
clear that she was off guard and her husband free to do as he pleased.
Up in heaven one spring morning as he idly watched the earth, Zeus suddenly saw a
charming spectacle. Europa had waked early, troubled just as Io had been by a dream, only this
time not of a god who loved her but of two Continents who each in the shape of a woman tried to
possess her, Asia saying that she had given her birth and therefore owned her, and the other, as
yet nameless, declaring that Zeus would give the maiden to her.
Once awake from this strange vision which had come at dawn, the time when true dreams
oftenest visit mortals, Europa decided not to try to go to sleep again, but to summon her
companions, girls born in the same year as herself and all of noble birth, to go out with her to the
lovely blooming meadows near the sea. Here was their favorite meeting place, whether they
wanted to dance or bathe their fair bodies at the river mouth or gather flowers.
This time all had brought baskets, knowing that the flowers were now at their perfection.
Europa’s was of gold, exquisitely chased with figures which showed, oddly enough, the story of
Io, her journeys in the shape of a cow, the death of Argus, and Zeus lightly touching her with his
divine hand and changing her back into a woman. It was, as may be perceived, a marvel worth
gazing upon, and had been made by no less a personage than Hephaestus, the celestial workman
of Olympus.
Lovely as the basket was, there were flowers as lovely to fill it with, sweet- smelling
narcissus and hyacinths and violets and yellow crocus, and most radiant of all, the crimson
splendor of the wild rose. The girls gathered them delightedly, wandering here and there over the
meadow, each one a maiden fairest among the fair; yet even so, Europa shone out among them as
the Goddess of Love outshines the sister Graces. And it was that very Goddess of Love who
brought about what next happened. As Zeus in heaven watched the pretty scene, she who alone
can conquer Zeus—along with her son, the mischievous boy Cupid—shot one of her shafts into
his heart, and that very instant he fell madly in love with Europa. Even though Hera was away,
he thought it well to be cautious, and before appearing to Europa he changed himself into a bull.
Not such a one as you might see in a stall or grazing in a field, but one beautiful beyond all bulls
that ever were, bright chestnut in color, with a silver circle on his brow and horns like the
crescent of the young moon. He seemed so gentle as well as so lovely that the girls were not
frightened at his coming, but gathered around to caress him and to breathe the heavenly
fragrance that came from him, sweeter even than that of the flowery meadow. It was Europa he
drew toward, and as she gently touched him, he lowed so musically, no flute could give forth a
more melodious sound.

Then he lay down before her feet and seemed to show her his broad back, and she cried
to the others to come with her and mount him.

For surely he will bear us on his back,

He is so mild and dear and gentle to behold.
He is not like a bull, but like a good, true man,
Except he cannot speak.
 Smiling she sat down on his back, but the others, quick though they were to follow her,
had no chance. The bull leaped up and at full speed rushed to the seashore and then not into, but
over, the wide water. As he went the waves grew smooth before him and a whole procession rose
up from the deep and accompanied him—the strange sea-gods, Nereids riding upon dolphins,
and Tritons blowing their horns, and the mighty Master of the Sea himself, Zeus’s own brother.
Europa, frightened equally by the wondrous creatures she saw and the moving waters all
around, clung with one hand to the bull’s great horn and with the other caught up her purple
dress to keep it dry, and the winds

Swelled out the deep folds even as a sail

Swells on a ship, and ever gently thus
They wafted her.

No bull could this be, thought Europa, but most certainly a god; and she spoke pleadingly
to him, begging him to pity her and not leave her in some strange place all alone. He spoke to her
in answer and showed her she had guessed rightly what he was. She had no cause to fear, he told
her. He was Zeus, greatest of gods, and all he was doing was from love of her. He was taking her
to Crete, his own island, where his mother had hidden him from Cronus when he was born, and
there she would bear him

Glorious sons whose sceptres shall hold sway

Over all men on earth.

Everything happened, of course, as Zeus had said. Crete came into sight; they landed, and
the Seasons, the gatekeepers of Olympus, arrayed her for her bridal. Her sons were famous men,
not only in this world but in the next—where two of them, Minos and Rhadamanthus, were
rewarded for their justice upon the earth by being made the judges of the dead. But her own
name remains the best known of all.