4.12: Io--a Tragic Mortal Victim to Zeus’ Tyranny

Aeschylus’s version of Prometheus Bound was composed with two primary ambitions: firstly, to offer an alternate interpretation of the contest between the Titan and the Olympian, one that justifies the defiance of the Titan, secondly, to explore the torment of Io, a hapless victim of Zeus and Hera’s marital discord.

Io [Ī-o] as the child of Melia, a wood nymph and daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and Inachus [ĪN-a-kus], a river god from the Argive plain, was the descendent of three significant dynasties, the houses of Argos, Thebes, and Crete.

As a princess, she was assigned to serve Hera as priestess to the goddess’s most sacred temple, Heraeum, near Mycenae in central Greece. But this role brought her to the eye of Zeus, who immediately began a nightly campaign to seduce her. Preying upon her through her dreams, he relentlessly badgered the virgin to accept his lecherous advances. Ultimately, he surrounded her with mist, and forced his “affections” upon her. However, Hera noticed the odd cloud on an otherwise sunny day and investigated. Acting quickly and without thought, Zeus transformed the girl into a white cow. But Hera, who knew her spouse’s philandering moves well, cannily asked that he make a gift to her of the cow. Zeus complied, albeit reluctantly, relieving himself of the obligation to protect his victim from further harassment, which Hera had already designed. To keep Zeus away, Hera employed the watchman Argus, whose 100 eyes never rested.

Feeling remorseful yet unwilling to defy Hera directly, Zeus sent Hermes to free Io. However, not even the sly god of thieves and trickery could slip past the vigilant eyes of Argus. Using his other skills, he disguised himself as a shepherd and sang the warden to sleep. Once sedated, Hermes decapitated Argus, an act which earned him the title Argeïphontes [ar-jee-i-FON-teez], “slayer of Argus.”

The murder of her favorite guard both wounded and further enraged Hera. After preserving his eyes upon the tail feathers of the peacock, she sent a gadfly to constantly sting Io, causing her to flee across Greece to escape the torturous insect. Her path led northwest to the sea around Ithaca, which now bears her name, the Ionian Sea. She then fled across the Pindus mountains to Macedonia, Thrace, through the straits between Europe and Asia, a region that would be named the Bosporus, “cow crossing,” and finally north from Scythia, around the Black Sea (modern day Romania) into the Caucasus Mountains (modern day Ukraine), where she found Prometheus and related her agonizing tale.

The curse of Io presents the worser face of the Olympians. Emphasizing their impulsive, callous reactions, Aeschylus highlights the unmerited and cruel punishment she suffers, as opposed to Prometheus who openly defied Zeus. The poignancy of her tale emphasizes the stakes of Prometheus' standoff against Zeus, but also underscores the risk to innocent young women who fall under the gaze of an amoral, capricious autocrat. Carefully positioned in the middle of the drama, Aeschylus understood the emotional impact upon the audience who now see the supreme rulers of Olympus as blatantly impassive to the misery they’ve inflicted.

However, seeing the King of Gods so indifferent offers space for his eventual and rewarding change and growth. Zeus' evolution from an Id-centric, militant demagogue unfolds throughout the trilogy of plays. Thus his interactions with Prometheus in the first play emphasizes his rage at Prometheus' resistance to bend to his will, and Prometheus' foretelling of his own impending torture. He and Io are kindred in their misery, yet Prometheus shares a promising future for Io: at the Nile she will escape the torture and Zeus will restore to her human form allowing her to birth their son, Epaphus, who will beget fifty daughters. Of them, forty-eight will murder their husbands, but of the two who depart from the tradition, one will birth a line of kings and the other will birth a prestigious line leading to a hero who will eventually free Prometheus. Though the hero is unnamed in the drama, it is understood to be Heracles, another son of Zeus.

In prognosticating Io’s future, the Titan has also predicted his own emancipation. Yet, first he must accept and endure his imprisonment in Tartarus while he awaits Zeus' eventual maturation.

Ironically, only Prometheus and his foresight can save Zeus, yet this cannot happen until Zeus is sufficiently emotionally mature and ready to put away his instruments of anger, including earthquakes and lightning strikes. When this occurs in Prometheus the Firebringer, the two mighty forces reconcile. Zeus agrees to exchange Prometheus' freedom for his own salvation which comes with the knowledge that a union with Thetis, daughter of Ocean, would produce a son powerful enough to supplant him. Displaying a measure of self-constraint unseen in Ouranos and Kronos, Zeus arranges a marriage between Thetis and the mortal king Peleus, who will become the parents of the greatest fighter of the Trojan War: Achilles.