This myth is curious in many ways. One, this event, the wooing of Io by Zeus results in a bloodline that birthed kings, demigods, and Olympian gods. Two, it is a somewhat straightforward story and even though it does carry with it many characters important to Greek lore, the cast isn’t as expansive as say the myth of Theseus or the Labors of Heracles.
Io was a Peloponnesian princess from Argos, one of the oldest cities of the Mediterranean still inhabited today. As you can imagine she was just minding her business and one day Zeus took notice of her beauty. Now, Io was a priestess, some say she was the first priestess of Hera, the goddess of Marriage and the wife of Zeus. In some versions, she indulged in Zeus’ advances whereas other versions say she rejected Zeus at first but gave in after being thrown out by her father for this.
Regardless, the result was the same, Io and Zeus did – to quote Alex Meyers – “the Devil’s Tango”
Hera, the wife of Zeus, would often have a tedious time with her husband. You see there were no counselors for marriages in the ancient Greek world (that we know of) and I doubt there would have been a mortal alive who would dare give marriage counseling to two ancient immortal indestructible beings of pure energy and bad tempers. So what did they do, Hera would lash out at Zeus’ lovers or his children (Ask Heracles).
The thing is, Zeus had this nasty habit of sleeping around with goddesses, princesses, and basically anything that tickled his fancy. One such exploit was Io – who has one of the moons of Jupiter named after her as well, along with Calisto, Ganymede, and Europa.
During this exploit, Hera was very suspicious of how Zeus was acting. Now I have heard this next part of the myth comes in two versions depending on who you ask.
1. Zeus, to protect Io from being found by Hera – covered the world in a bank of clouds that obviously made Hera even more suspicious of anything he was doing. When she found him, he was standing next to a beautiful cow or heifer – Io in disguise. Zeus tried to lie his way out of this situation telling his wife that this beautiful miracle cow just sprang up out of the earth with no warning. Hera saw right through it, you can just imagine this as a sitcom – this particular part reminded me of Phil and Clair from Modern Family. Hera, going along with the story, begged him to give her the cow as a present. It was just so beautiful she wanted to keep the heifer all for herself. He agreed just to keep up the act and probably looked at the camera in frustration.
2. The other version was the one I taught when I worked in an art museum. It was the version I was taught. Hera had Zeus followed when he was with Io. Then it was her that approached Io after Zeus left and took her prisoner, keeping her under a watchful eye. After he left she took Io, she transformed the poor princess into a cow.
The result is the same, Io in heifer form was in the possession of Hera, as a prisoner. As you can imagine, Zeus did not want to leave things like this immediately and was trying to find Io and turn her back, but Hera moved her. It’s a whole thing, the Greek gods using mortals for their games. Hera made sure no one not even Hermes would be able to find her new pet. She did this by keeping a giant on watch duty. Enter Argos – of a hundred eyes – to protect her and make sure Zeus would never come.
Now Argus or Argos is an interesting figure. First, it’s curious that Io’s hometown is called Argos and this giant has the same name, secondly, Argus and Io may be half-siblings. Different sources say different things but many sources agree that both of these figures are children of Inacchus the King of Argos
Zeus desperate to be with her, sent Hermes to cut off the head of Argos and present it to his wife. Hera saddened by the death of her guardian, made a bird from the blood of Argos and gave the bird a hundred eye fashioned from the eyes of the giant, and thus the peacock was born.
The union between Zeus and Io did lead to a child, in fact, the descendants of this union include the Europa, King Minos and Ariadne lineage, Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and a few generations after that Heracles himself. In fact, Io is the great-grandmother of Cadmus a legendary hero, and the great great great great grandmother of Dionysus the god of wine!
Also, as you may have wondered… just out of those I mentioned, Zeus was with Io, and is the father of Dionysus, Heracles, and Minos… yeah he did the dirty dancing several times within the same lineage, bloodline? Keeping track of the immortals and their… urges is a whole different game.
Myths Reborn 