Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘Hello, Argus. Let me keep you company for a while,’ he said, unlatching the gate and slipping in. ‘Nice heifer you’ve got there.’

Argus swivelled a dozen eyes towards Hermes, who sat down on the grass, took out a set of pipes and started to play. For two hours he played and he sang. The music, the afternoon heat, the scent of poppies, lavender and wild thyme, the soft lapping and purling of a nearby stream – slowly Argus’s eyes started to close, one by one.

As the very hundredth eye at last winked shut Hermes lowered his pipes, stole forward and stabbed Argus in the heart. All the gods were capable of great cruelty – Hermes could be as vicious as any of them.

With Argus dead, Zeus opened the gate into the field and set Io free. But before he had a chance to change her back into human form Hera, who had seen what had happened, sent down a gadfly which stung Io so painfully and persistently that she bucked and screamed and galloped away, far from Zeus’s reach.

Sorrowing at the death of her beloved servant, Hera took Argus’s hundred bright eyes and fixed them onto the tail of a very dull, dowdy old fowl, transforming it into what we know today as the peacock – which is how the now proud, colourful and haughty bird came for ever to be associated with the goddess.fn5

Io, meanwhile, charged on along the northern shore of the Aegean Sea, swimming over at the place where Europe becomes Asia, the spot we still call in her honour the cow-crossing, or in Greek, the Bosporus.fn6 On and on she careered, thrashing, tossing and squealing in her agony until she reached the Caucasus. There the gadfly seemed to relent for a while, enough for her to see the figure of Prometheus, racked in pain upon the mountainside.

‘Sit down and catch your breath awhile, Io,’ said the Titan. ‘Be of good cheer. Things will get better.’

‘They could hardly be worse,’ wailed Io. ‘I’m a cow. I’m being attacked by the largest and most spiteful gadfly the world has ever seen. And Hera will destroy me. It’s only a question of whether I am stung to death or go mad and drown myself in the sea.’

‘I know it seems dark for you now,’ said Prometheus, ‘but I see into the future sometimes and I do know this. You will return to human shape. You will found a great dynasty in the land where Nilus crawls. And from your line will spring the greatest of all the heroes.fn7 So chin up and be cheerful, eh?’

It was hard for Io, in all her tribulation, to ignore these words from one who – even as she looked on in horror – was being ripped open and gorged upon by a pair of evil-looking vultures. What were her minor inconveniences when set against his perpetual agony?

As things turned out, Io did return to human shape. She met up with Zeus in Egypt and bore him a son EPAPHUS, who will play an important party of the story of Phaeton, which is just coming up. Supposedly Zeus impregnated Io just by gently laying a hand on her – Epaphus means ‘touch’. Io also had a daughter by Zeus, called KEROESSA, whose son BYZAS went on to found the great city of Byzantium. Whether Keroessa was conceived by touch or the more traditional method of generation we do not know.

Io may have been a cow, but she was a very influential and important one.

The Semen-Soaked Scarf

A rather touching story tells of how Athena, without sacrificing her chastity, had a role in the conception and birth of one of the founders of the city state of Athens.

Lame Hephaestus, ever since splitting Zeus’s head and thereby helping bring Athena into the world, had developed a strong passion for the goddess. One day, unable to control his lust, he tracked her down to some corner of high Olympus and tried to force himself on her. Alas, in his excitement he succeeded only in spilling his seed on her thigh. Athena, in silent disgust, removed her headband and used it to wipe up the mess before throwing it down the mountain.

The sodden fillet landed on the ground far below. Hephaestus’s divine semen seeped into the earth and Gaia was made pregnant. From her was born a boy, ERECHTHEUS. Looking down from heaven Athena saw this and determined that this child should be immortal. She descended from Olympus, put the baby in a wicker basket, closed it up and placed it in the care of three mortal sisters, HERSE, AGLAUROS and PANDROSOS. On no account, Athena told them, must the basket ever be opened. But Aglauros and Herse could not resist peeping inside. They saw a wriggling baby boy bound up in the coils of a writhing snake. All snakes were sacred to Athena and this one was a part of the enchantment which the goddess was using to endow the infant Erechtheus with immortality. The shocking sight sent the two women instantly insane and they threw themselves off the topmost point of the hill now called the Acropolis, or ‘high citadel’. Erechtheus grew up to be (or to father, the stories disagree) ERECHTHONIUS, the legendary founder of Athens.fn8