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io

I

io is a very violent place, where a human would not live long enough to enjoy thebeautiful colors it contains in its land formations.

iolies within a dangerous part of jupiter's magnetic field. the radiationfound in this area is a thousand times stronger than what is needed to kill ahuman. if you somehow survived the radiation you would still be in trouble,because io is covered with giant volcanoes which erupt with extreme frequency.these volcanoes spurt out large amounts of sulfuric acid into the air whichfalls causing the beautiful reds, yellows and oranges of its appearance.

iois the third largest of jupiter's moons, and slightly larger than the earth'smoon. it was named after a women who jupiter fell in love with.

II

in greek mythology, io was a priestess of hera in argos, a nymph who wasseduced by zeus, who changed her into a heifer to escape detection. hermistress hera set ever-watchful argus panoptes to guard her, but hermes wassent to distract the guardian and slay him. heifer io was loosed to roam theworld, stung by a maddening gadfly sent by hera, and wandered to egypt, thusplacing her descendant belus in egypt; his sons cadmus and danaus would thus"return" to mainland greece.

io's father is generally given as inachus, a river godcredited with inaugurating the worship of hera in the countryside round argos, thus establishingher as an autochthonous spirit of the argolid and thus by her nature thenymph of a spring, a naiad.

the myth is told most anecdotally by ovid, in metamorphoses.according to ovid, one day, zeus noticed the maiden and lusted after her. as iotells her own story in aeschylus' prometheus bound, she rejected his whisperednighttime advances until the oracles caused her own father to drive her outinto the fields of lerna. there, zeus covered her with clouds to hide her fromthe eyes of his jealous wife, hera, who nonetheless came to investigate. in avain attempt to hide his crimes, zeus turned himself into a white cloud andtransformed io into a beautiful white heifer. hera was not fooled. she demandedthe heifer as a present.

hera tethered io to the olive-tree in the temenos of hercult-site, the heraion, and placed her in the charge of many-eyed arguspanoptes to keep her separated from zeus. zeus commanded hermes to kill argus;ovid added the detail that he lulled all hundred eyes to sleep. hera thenforced io to wander the earth without rest, plagued by a gadfly (οίστρος oroestrus: see etymology of "estrus" ) to sting her into madness. ioeventually crossed the path between the propontis and the black sea, which thusacquired the name bosporus (meaning ox passage), where she met prometheus.

prometheus had been chained on mt. caucasusby zeus for teaching man how to make fire and tricking him into accepting theworse part of a sacrifice while the mortals kept the better part (meat); everyday, a giant eagle fed on prometheus' liver. despite his agony, he comforted iowith the information that she would be restored to human form and become theancestress of the greatest of all heroes, heracles. io escaped across theionian sea to egypt,where she was restored to human form by zeus. there, she gave birth to zeus'sson epaphus, and a daughter as well, keroessa. she later married egyptian kingtelegonus. their grandson, danaos, eventually returned to greece with hisfifty daughters (the danaids), as recalled in aeschylus' play the suppliants.

the myth of io must have been well-known to homer, who oftencalls hermes hermes argeiphontes, "hermes argus-slayer." walterburkert notes that the story of io was told in the ancient epic tradition atleast four times of which we have traces: in the danais, in the phoronis—phoroneus founded the cult of hera, according to hyginus' fabulae 274 and 143—in a fragment of the hesiodic aigimios, as well as in an oxyrhynchus papyrusfragment supplementing the hesiodic catalogue of women. a mourningcommemoration of io was observed at the heraion of argos into classical times.

the mythic events concerning io were transplanted, no doubtby colonists from argos,to various far-flung sites in the hellenic world.

the ancients connected io with the moon, and inaeschylus' prometheus bound, where io encounters prometheus, she refers toherself as "the horned virgin", both bovine and lunar.