Zeus, Io, and the Art of Founding Entire Civilizations Based on Women’s Trauma

In the Odyssey, Hermes is called the "Slayer of Argus"... but why? AND more importantly: Who is Io and why is her story both foundational and horrifying (with fun elements, I swear!). CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Sources: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter; intro passage read was from the Brookes More translation; Early Greek Myths by Timothy Gantz; Pseudo-Apollodorus quotation https://www.theoi.com/Heroine/Io.html; Herodotus' Histories https://topostext.org/work/22#1.1. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 1:05Liv Albert?

  For Jove, not long before, had seen Aya while returning from her father's stream, and said, "Oh, virgin, worthy of immortal Jove, although some happy mortal's chosen bride, behold these shades of overhanging trees, and seek their cool recesses while the sun is glowing in the height of middle skies. And as he spoke, he pointed out the groves. But should the dens of wild beasts frighten you? With safety you may enter the deep woods conducted by a god, not with a god of small repute, but in the care of him who holds the heavenly scepter in his hand

• 1:47Liv Albert?

  and fulminates the trackless thunderbolts. Forsake me not."

• 1:54Liv Albert?

  For while he spoke, she fled, and swiftly behind the pasture fields of Lerna and Lurkia's arbors, where the trees are planted thickly. But the god called forth a heavy shadow which involved the wide extended earth, and stopped her flight, and ravished in that cloud her chastity.

• 2:20Liv Albert?

  Oh, hi there. Hello, welcome. I am Liv, and this, my friends, is Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! Now, who can believe it's June already?

• 2:33Liv Albert?

  It's wild how fast time flies when the rising techno oligarch fascists are fueling it. But thankfully, this month, I've decided that we're all going to escape the rising techno oligarch fascists in favor of the Old World, when the fascists weren't quite as stupid. Simpler times. But seriously, this June, this year, June is serving a slightly different purpose than usual, which I feel awkward about. But typically, I devote the month of June to Pride episodes. I have done that for years, and it does feel particularly yucky not to do that this year of all years. But frankly, it's coincidental, because the fact is, there are only so many queer stories, and I have covered them in immense detail

• 3:17Liv Albert?

  over many different episodes over the course of these eight years. And this June just also happens to be the month when my Pride and Joy baby child's book, The Odyssey: A Modern Retelling, is birthed into the world. That was a grosser metaphor than necessary, but it is the closest thing I will ever have to a child, except for maybe anchovy. And regardless, that's kind of the point. So I will be sharing some bonus re-airings of favorite queer episodes, and our diving into the Odyssey over the course of the month of June plus won't exclude queer narratives, obviously, because how could it? They're...

• 3:58Liv Albert?

  I mean, have you, have you seen who is playing, who is likely at least, playing Achilles in the new movie? Talk about the singularly perfect casting, the, the one piece of casting where, if true, I'm not furious. And by one, I mean, I, I'm also pretty down with Lupita Nyong'o as Helen slash Clytemnestra. But if it is true,

• 4:20Liv Albert?

  that Elliot Page is playing Achilles. I mean, I have a, I have a conversation scheduled regardless of whether that's true. We'll talk about the rumor. I don't care. I'm going to make an entire episode about Achilles. And the, and in any case, in any case, the point is June is not going to have no queer narratives, no pride narratives. It's just that it's also for my book, baby. So with all of that ranted and raved, today's story, today's episode, rather, is covering a story that is, okay, it's not actually from the Odyssey, but in its own way, it's even more ancient than the Odyssey and thus relevant. It is so much more ancient than the Odyssey that moments from

• 5:03Liv Albert?

  this myth are mentioned often in Homer. In fact, today's episode comes from a comment slash question that one listener had in an earlier Odyssey reading episode. Why is Hermes called the Slayer of Argus was the question, but the answer is so much bigger and more important than Hermes. This is also a delightful example of the breadth of this podcast and a good reminder to me that there are stories that I can retread really easily and people will have no idea that I've already covered it before. There's always new ways to tell these stories, especially when it comes to going on 800 episodes and nine years. I keep saying eight years. I feel like it's nine.

• 5:49Liv Albert?

  In any case, this story has featured in different forms as far back as the third episode of this podcast. Again, nine years ago, 800 episodes almost. So I guess it's time to return.

• 6:03Liv Albert?

  Back then, it, this was the first time that I tried to dive into the vast sexual crimes of Zeus. Back in that third episode, I've known what I'm about since the beginning. But in that case, it was those earlier times, my research was minimal, if existent at all. And so this story featured alongside a bunch of others. And the story was also somewhat revisited alongside, or rather, along with one of the more famous plays from the ancient world, Prometheus Bound. The story is so wrapped up in that too. But today we are looking at the story from the only POV that actually matters.

• 6:50Liv Albert?

  The woman character, the one who's like actually the center, the subject of the whole story, but whose story is kind of ignored in favor of all of the dudes.

• 7:03Liv Albert?

  Something new and different.

• 7:19Liv Albert?

  Zeus, Io, and the art of founding entire civilizations based on women's trauma.

• 7:42Liv Albert?

  For Zeus, not long before, had seen Io while returning from her father's streams and said, "Oh, virgin, worthy of immortal Jove, although some happy mortal's chosen bride, behold these shades of overhanging trees and seek their cool recesses while the sun is glowing in the height of middle skies." As he spoke, he pointed out the groves, "But should the dens of wild beasts frighten you, with safety you may enter the deep woods, conducted by a god, not with a god of small repute, but in the care of him who holds the heavenly scepter in his hand and fulminates the trackless thunderbolts. Forsake me not."

• 8:28Liv Albert?

  For while he spoke, she fled, and swiftly left behind the pasture fields of Lerna and Lurkea's arbors, where the trees are planted thickly. But the god called forth a heavy shadow, which involved the wide extended earth, and stopped her flight and ravished in that cloud her chastity.

• 8:53Liv Albert?

  That, repeated from the opening, was from Ovid's Metamorphoses, the old translation by Brooks Moore. It was simply too impactful. I had to read it again slash introduce this entire episode with it. Ovid, obviously, is writing his Metamorphoses with the intention of making a dramatic impact. And he is succeeding here. The story comes right at the beginning of the Metamorphoses, the end of Book One, and it follows immediately after the iconic, famous, and horrifying story of Apollo attempting to rape the nymph Daphne and her escape by being transformed into a tree. Like so, so, so many myths from Greek mythology,

• 9:37Liv Albert?

  the story revolves around a woman being raped by a man. But unlike so many other stories like hers, Io's is not just a single story of assault by Zeus or just the single birth story of one hero, but something so, so much bigger and which ends with her becoming the founding ancestor for most of the mythical heroic world. Which means that we also tend to learn about Io's story without any of the trauma or without the real weight of the horror of the acts themselves. Instead, it gets this focus of the end result, right?

• 10:17Liv Albert?

  As if that transforms the woman's experience into something less traumatic. Because impressive people come out of it at the end? As if that somehow impacts the experiences of the women who were listening to these founding stories of their culture. But that's it, I promise, I'm not, I'm not trying to make this one overly dark. It's gonna be fun. It may ultimately be a horrifying story, but along the way, we have one of the more iconic transformations, one of the more delightful quote-unquote monsters, and a delightfully unhinged attempt by the ancient Greeks to reckon with their thoughts of cultural superiority

• 11:01Liv Albert?

  in the face of cultures which, well, seem by most measures to be superior.

• 11:09Liv Albert?

  Basically, Io's story has everything. And it starts in the Argalid, the northeast peninsula of the Peloponnese. But this story begins so long ago that even the names of the cities didn't really exist. Later, this will be where Argos and Mycenae are located. By most later counts, Io was the daughter of a river god, Inachus, and so that made her a naiad, or a river nymph.

• 11:40Liv Albert?

  Either way, Io was a young woman, she was a girl, really, who was, one day, spotted by the king of the gods himself, Zeus. And as we all know all too well, when Zeus spots a girl, that means only one thing. One way or another, he's going to have sex with her and probably make an important baby. Now, the earliest versions of this story are less clear on the details. That's why I'm rushing through it just a little for now. In these earliest versions, we know just these little details. Io was this young woman raped by Zeus. Zeus's wife and queen Hera suspected that her husband was, once again, cheating on her by raping random women, girls, goddesses,

• 12:24Liv Albert?

  or at least one boy, in the one case. Under this patriarchal power structure, Hera's reaction is to punish the woman, and by doing so, punish her husband. So she transforms Io into a cow. But this doesn't deter Zeus, and so he rapes the cow as a bull. Can you hear the exhaustion in my voice? Now Hera, still keen to punish her husband by taking away his new and sentient toy, then assigns her favorite and most beloved guard, this all-seeing giant named Argus. The Olympian royal couple, as they are wont to do, make their marital problems everyone else's problems.

• 13:06Liv Albert?

  And so Zeus's reaction to Hera setting Argus to keep watch of Io the cow, and thus prevent Zeus from continuing to assault her... God, this is a lot. Anyway, Zeus's reaction to this all-seeing, hundred-eyed guardian watching over his toy is to send his own guard to take Argus out, handle the problem.

• 13:31Liv Albert?

  Though, I suppose guard is a bit of a relative term in this case because for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Zeus sends none other than his part-time messenger, part-time trickster god, son Hermes, to take out Hera's guard. Now, I mentioned his trickster status because in the versions where we have little to no details of how Hermes is able to kill this all-cyan guard, Argus, he does. We just, we just know he does. We know that he does because, again, coming full circle and tying this episode into my Odyssey-fueled episodes and everyone's questions, Hermes is very regularly referred to as simply the slayer of Argus.

• 14:13Liv Albert?

  In the Greek, it's Argae Phontis. With Argus killed, Hera now sends this gadfly to bother poor Io, a woman still in the shape of a cow. Followed by this pestering buzzing fly, Io wanders. And wanders. And wanders some more, all the way to Egypt. In Egypt, so the oldest versions of the story go, this is where Io finally has children by the horror show King of the Gods, Zeus. Her children, of course, go on to mythologically found not only the early mythical dynasties

• 14:52Liv Albert?

  of Argos, Mycenae, and the wider Peloponnese, but in some versions also Egypt and beyond. Io's progeny is so famous, her impact on the Greek mythohistorical timeline is so enormous that the details of her assault, all the trauma that is so intertwined with her story, get somewhat forgotten. Or rather, we're meant to just understand these elements as facts of the ancient world, you know, not facts that we're meant to reckon with as being foundational to our culture. No. I mean, all the resulting details are definitely foundational to our culture, but it's like, it's like a little awkward, and it makes men feel bad, um, when we emphasize that

• 15:35Liv Albert?

  our entire culture is based around women's trauma and oppression. So instead, we'll just pretend that because this woman was mythical, her trauma wasn't real, and that trauma definitely did not get passed down to the very real and historical women who would have experienced the story after story after story after story that utilized bodies just like their own as purely means to certain ends.

• 15:57Liv Albert?

  It's fine. It's just the way it was. It's just the way it was. Seduction and all, right?

• 16:14Liv Albert?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the drill. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now, and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that, I mean, it's nearing sweater season, so those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather, and I use it like basically every day.

• 16:56Liv Albert?

  Because that's the thing. They have really great basics. Like, they have really great things that you can wear with so many other things. Just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves, to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry that adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen? You know, making things more affordable?

• 17:41Liv Albert?

  So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 18:19Liv Albert?

  The story of Io is so ancient that it's young again. Rather much like stories of Heracles and these other foundational stories to the culture, the characters and storylines themselves are so old, so ancient, so ubiquitous across the Greek world, that there was no need for physically recording narratives. Everyone just knew the stories, right? Which means that, again, we know that the simple version of the story that I just told you was so well-known as to become part of the culture's founding mythos. Io was considered truly one of the, like, earliest names in, like, important, mortal,

• 19:04Liv Albert?

  mythographical histories. In the earliest sources that we have, the Iliad and the Odyssey, obviously, this idea of Io as a foundational mother figure was very well-understood. The story of the killing of Argus by Hermes was so well-acknowledged that the poet Homer would simply just call him the Slayer of Argus, and everyone would know exactly who and what he was referring to. Now, the story of Io is so ancient, even Herodotus couldn't pick apart what was mythology and what was history. In the second paragraph of his Histories, this work that is considered the first work

• 19:48Liv Albert?

  of Western history, I mean, we're using history in, like, very broad terms right now, but in terms of intentional writers of history, we call Herodotus the so-called "Father of History." And in this second paragraph of his work, he details how he believes the wars between the Greeks and the barbarians, or eventually the Persians specifically, began.

• 20:12Liv Albert?

  Those of the Persians who have knowledge of history declare that the Phoenicians first began the quarrel. These, they say, came from that which is called the Erythrian Sea to this of ours, and having settled in the land where they continue even now to dwell, set themselves forthwith to make long voyages by sea. And conveying merchandise of Egypt and of Assyrians, they arrived at other places and also at Argos. Now, Argos was at that time in all points the first of the states within that land which is now called Helas. The Phoenicians arrived then at this land of Argos and began to dispose of their ship's cargo, and on the fifth or sixth day after they had arrived, when their goods had been

• 20:56Liv Albert?

  almost all sold, there came down to the sea a great company of women, and among them the daughter of the king. And her name, as the Helenes also agree, was Io, the daughter of Anakos. These standing near to the stern of the ship were buying of the wares such as pleased them most, when of a sudden the Phoenicians, passing the word from one to another, made a rush upon them, and the greater part of the women escaped by flight, but Io and certain others were carried off. So they put them on board their ship and forthwith departed, sailing away to Egypt. Herodotus sees it clearly.

• 21:37Liv Albert?

  His culture was founded on the abduction and sexual assault of women. I'm sure you've heard it recently enough from Michaela and her lovely series on Herodotus and his histories, but Herodotus opens his entire work of ancient Greek history by explaining that it all began not with this one woman being abducted and assaulted, but with four separate women being abducted and assaulted over the course of history. The first, he says, the one whose story started it all, was Io. Now, to Herodotus, the blame for Io's abduction isn't on Zeus, but the Phoenicians. He works in at least what he believes to be reality. So the abductors can't be a god, instead they must be historical, because it's real

• 22:22Liv Albert?

  men that abduct and rape women, not gods. Phoenicia makes reasonable sense, not least because of the second rape, an abduction that Herodotus attributes with the foundations of not only Greek culture, but also the ongoing wars with the non-Greek barbarians. Europa. Now Europa was, of course, a Phoenician princess, who, in the mythology, is abducted and raped by, you guessed it, Zeus. She's brought to the island of Crete, where she goes on to found the Minoan dynasty and everyone that comes after them. So again, a woman's trauma becomes foundational to culture and thus not something we are meant to question, or even prod at. That's just how it was back then, after all.

• 23:04Liv Albert?

  And, uh, they didn't even have a word for rape. It's fine. I have in my script here just whispers bullshit, but it wasn't gonna go off smoothly, so I'll just tell you about it instead. You get the idea. Herodotus is very aware of these types of foundational myths. The stories have been told for centuries, like, well beyond his lifetime. So he, as this historian, is trying to pick out what's likely or possible and what's obviously divine intervention, which needs to be placed within the realm of reality. Or what he considers the realm of reality. And naturally, the more realistic elements of these stories aren't the gods transforming

• 23:47Liv Albert?

  themselves into animals, or into women, or into cows and bulls, and something which, of course, happens in both the story of Io and Europa. No, the realism, to Herodotus, is just the rape and assault of mortal women.

• 24:06Liv Albert?

  Something that's all too true of reality now. Because like, who's keeping count of the men being held accountable in North America for the crimes documented in the Epstein files? Someone keeping a list? Don't worry, I can help you. It's zero. It's zero. It's none of them. No. The only person in jail for decades of well documented crimes against women, girls and, and boys, is a woman. I mean, a vile horrific woman surely, but she's, it's still, it's the only person in jail for stuff we've all seen and read is a woman. In jail for helping the men. But the men are not in jail. That's crazy. So Herodotus explains, after the Phoenicians abducted the woman Io from her home in Argos

• 24:50Liv Albert?

  and brought her to Phoenicia, then eventually the Greeks came to provide some kind of retribution by, ha, ha, yeah, abducting another woman.

• 25:00Liv Albert?

  In Herodotus's reality, Europa is brought to Crete. The cycle continues. After her, Herodotus says it's a princess from the east who just happened to be called Medea. Right? Oh, and after this Colchian princess, Medea is taken by the Greeks, then it's time for the next group of eastern so-called barbarians to make their move. This is when, Herodotus explains, the Trojans came from the east and abducted the Spartan queen Helen. And so the cycle continues. And with Helen, Herodotus can tie in a more acknowledged reality. The Trojan War was one of the most viscery, viscerally real of all of the ancient stories.

• 25:43Liv Albert?

  And so Helen's being the final abduction in his story allows him to feed that cultural history right into the story of how it was that the Greeks ended up so often at war with the Persians. And that, he says, is the origin of not only the Greek civilization, but also the Egyptian and even the Phoenician too. A world of history and culture, all wrapped up in the stories of women's trauma.

• 26:16Liv Albert?

  The story of Io is simply, it's that ancient. It's so ancient that she features as a main character in one of Aeschylus's surviving plays, Prometheus Bound. Now, I re- re- aired that one sometime last year, if you're curious. There, Io is, again, so ancient, so important in the grand scheme of Greek culture, that she features alongside none other than Prometheus, like, the god that humans can thank for everything. But naturally, even then, the story isn't about her, it's just about the men that she's associated with, in one way or another. But she's in it!

• 26:49Liv Albert?

  The story of Io is so ancient, that it isn't until around the turn of the millennia, like, first century BCE or CE, when the story is finally told in its own individual narrative, by our old friend Pseudo-Apollodorus, you know, the TLDR of Greek myth, the "just the facts, please" ancient source. Finally, only 800 or so years after her story was already so well-known as to be understood by Homer's archaic or early Iron Age audience, we have a version of her story with details, even a beginning, a middle, and end. This is how Apollodorus tells it:

• 27:32Liv Albert?

  "Zeus seduced Io while she was a priestess of Hera. When Hera discovered them, Zeus touched the girl, changed her into a white cow, and swore that he had not had sex with her. For this reason, says Hesiod, 'Oaths made in love do not incite divine anger.' Hera demanded the cow from Zeus and assigned Argos Panoptes as its guard. Argos tied the cow to an olive tree in the grove of Mycenaeans. Zeus instructed Hermes to steal her, and Hermes, unable to sneak her out because Hyrax had told on him, killed Argos with a stone. Hera then inflicted the cow

• 28:13Liv Albert?

  with gadfly, and she made her way, first to what was named after her, the Ionian Gulf. Next, she traveled through Illyria, past Hyamos, and crossed the waterway known as the Thracian Narrows, and now, because of her, the Bosporus." Leaving it behind, she went on to Scythia and to Cameria, wandering over much countryside and swimming through much sea in both Europe and Asia, until she finally reached Egypt, where she regained her earlier shape and gave birth beside the Nile River to a son, Epaphos. Hera asked the curates to kidnap the child, which they did. When Zeus found this out, he slew the curates,

• 28:58Liv Albert?

  while Io set out to find their baby. She wandered over all of Syria, and when she found Epaphos, she returned to Egypt and married to Leganous, who at that time was king of the Egyptians. She dedicated an image to Demeter, called Isis by the Egyptians, as also they called Io herself.

• 29:20Liv Albert?

  So by Apollodorus, the details start to give us some hints about Io's story, or at least what it ended up representing some centuries later. Because what began as a story tracing the cultural origins of the Peloponnesian peoples becomes something a little more imperial. By the time Apollodorus is writing, the Romans are already controlling Greece, and the world has become a far, far more colonized place. So now the story isn't just about this woman being forced to wander and found familial dynasties through divine rape, but with the addition of now incorporating foreign gods into the cultural mythos of Greece. By this point, Isis was broadly being worshipped in the Greek and Roman world, so including her in this swirling mythic history

• 30:05Liv Albert?

  and saying that, oh, the very ancient Egyptian goddess Isis is actually just Io, is a means of broadening this idea that not only was the ancient Mediterranean like just as interconnected and culturally diverse as it was, but also it solidifies this little origin detail, that Io was originally Greek, and thus all of the greatness of the Egyptians and beyond. She went all the way to Scythia and to Syria, and all of it, they say. All of that can be attributed first to the Greeks. She was Greek first. And you know, the more I write about this, the more I'm seeing some parallels in how history is being rewritten in order to ensure that the dominating imperial power structure is being upheld at any cost.

• 30:51Liv Albert?

  It's chill. But at the heart, behind the attempts at falsifying cultural supremacy, behind the attempts to historicize the events to fit a more reality-based narrative, behind the centuries and centuries of development and the evolution of characters, the expansion of details to make it all so much more impressive. Behind all of that is, still, a story of a woman's sexual assault, her trauma being used as the foundation of a civilization. And then one that is not particularly interested in the experience of women who go through that kind of trauma, to put it kindly.

• 31:32Liv Albert?

  And these are the stories or the versions of Io that develop through time, but the origins of her story that we know are just so unbelievably ancient that they laid the groundwork for the entirety of Greek mythology, culture, or history. But it isn't until Ovid's metamorphoses that we get a more detailed, sympathetic, even sufficiently impactful version of her story and her trauma.

• 32:00Liv Albert?

  So today, we're ending with Ovid's version. And this is not a direct to reading. The translations for that are just not good enough. So instead, I'm telling you the story with some quotes based on, of course, Stephanie McCarder's translation.

• 32:41Liv Albert?

  There's a place in Thessaly in the north where the god king of the rivers keeps track of his waterways. There, in the wake of Apollo's assault on the nymph Daphne, these river gods, one of whom is Daphne's own father, mourn the loss of her at the hands of the violently lustful Apollo. But one river is missing from this gathering, the god Inachus. He's mourning all on his own, just like Daphne, his daughter was taken harmed by a god. Inachus hides in his cave where he "swells his flow with tears and sadly mourns his missing daughter, Io, not knowing if she lives or is a ghost. He cannot find her anywhere

• 33:25Liv Albert?

  and thinks she's nowhere, and his mind fears even worse." It was just as this young nymph Io was leaving her father's river when Zeus, Jove in Ovid's Latin, had first seen her, when he first decided that he wanted her, regardless of how she felt about it. It was then that the god spoke to Io, and he told her that she was "a virgin worthy of Jove." There Zeus saw her, and having told her about her worthy virginity, pointed out that she didn't need to be afraid of the wild animals around her or of anything really, because

• 34:06Liv Albert?

  a god was there to protect her. "And not just any god, but the god. Zeus will keep you safe," he told her. "Don't run from me." She ran, she was already running. Io ran from the god, she ran from the man. "She had already left Lerna's pasture and Lirchiam's orchards when the god hid the stretching lands with fog, then checked her flight and raped her, chased no more." I mean, he may have been a Roman, but at least Ovid tells it like it fucking was. Meanwhile, the queen of the gods Hera was watching the happenings down on earth. Specifically, she

• 34:45Liv Albert?

  was watching the region of Argos, a region not yet sacred to that same goddess. That's still to come, and the name, if you can believe it. That day, she was looking down at Argos and noticed that it was remarkably misty, foggy even, way more than it would have been normally. That, she could tell, wasn't natural. So being married to the god of the sky, Hera knew it had something to do with him. But her husband was nowhere to be found. Hera went looking for him, straight to the source of that mysterious mist. And Zeus, naturally, he knew the moment she was there, he was ready. No one is better, or worse, I suppose, at fooling their wife than Zeus.

• 35:28Liv Albert?

  So, prepared for his wife's arrival and ready to hide his crimes against Io and Hera, Zeus transformed the girl into a cow, a heifer. Quote, "The heifer too is lovely." Juno praises her bovine beauty, though resentfully, and asks him whose she is and from where, what herd is hers, as if she does not know the truth.

• 35:55Liv Albert?

  Hera knows, and Zeus probably knows that Hera knows, but I think this may be just part of their kink, just fucking with each other. Hera questions him about the cow trying to trip him up, but Zeus is ready to be tripped up. This is foreplay, I swear. And when Hera asks for this cow as a gift, Zeus determines that there isn't much he can do except to give his wife exactly what she wants. Surely it would arouse suspicions if he were to deny her this nice-looking cow. Often tells us, quote, "What can he do? It's heartless to betray his love, but not to give her is suspicious. Shame compels him one way, love the other. Shame is nearly conquered by love.

• 36:37Liv Albert?

  But if he should deny the slight gift of a heifer to his wife and sister, she seems no cow at all." The word "love" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, and I know Stephanie was doing, chose it so specifically, the Latin must be equally as icky, because, ugh. The love, it seems, does not go both ways. Oh, weird. It's almost like it's not love. So Zeus did just as Hera asked. He gave her the heifer as a gift. Hera, knowing that she had something far more valuable than any old mortal cow, sprung into action. She had to prevent her husband from getting back to his cow/lover.

• 37:18Liv Albert?

  So she appointed her favorite guardian, the giant with a hundred eyes, Argus Panoptes. Of these eyes of Argus, quote, "Two at a time would sleep in alternation, the rest kept watch, remaining at their posts. Whatever way he stood, he looked at Io." With a hundred eyes and only two ever closed at one time, Argus could see Io from all angles at all times, no matter where the cow, woman, nymph tried to go. This cow with the human woman's brain and consciousness knew what she should do, but she couldn't. Io tried to appeal to Argus, she tried to speak with him, to plead with him, but she was a cow unable to speak

• 38:03Liv Albert?

  and only moo's came out when she tried. And certainly, she was not able to supplicate herself before the giant with a hundred eyes. When she heard herself moo, Io was frightened of the sound. That wasn't her voice. And when she looked into the river that she grew up playing in, that her god, her father was the god of, she saw not her own face, but a creature with horns and again scared herself with herself.

• 38:36Liv Albert?

  As a cow, even with Argus watching her, Io though is not alone. She finds her family, her naiad sisters and her river godfather. But at first, none of them know who she is. She can't speak or explain. So she just hangs around with her family, hoping one day she'll be able to tell them who she is. Quote, "In place of words, two letters that she traced in dirt gave evidence for her changed body."

• 39:11Liv Albert?

  She had to draw her name in the dirt, just so her father might finally know where she was, who she was.

• 39:21Liv Albert?

  And this story is meant to romanticize the founding of the Western culture.

• 39:30Liv Albert?

  Her father, Inachus, realized it was his daughter. He was heartbroken and a little relieved. He finally knew where she was, but it wasn't much of a consolation. He cried for her, with her, he hugged her, he told her that he loved her. He told her what he'd originally planned for her before. Quote, "Amid such weeping, dappled Argus drove him off and moved his raped and kidnapped daughter to distant pastures."

• 40:05Liv Albert?

  So now Io doesn't even have the comfort of her father after being finally reunited, even still a cow. He doesn't have the comfort of his daughter. Hera's guardian, the giant Argus Panoptes, drove Io far away where she would be alone, where he could keep his many, many, many eyes on her. This finally is too much for Zeus. Let's be optimistic even and say that it was at least in small part for the good of Io, what it is that Zeus does next. Because he sends his son, the messenger/trickster god Hermes. Hermes equipped with a wand that, with a single tap, makes even a giant with a hundred eyes fall asleep.

• 40:50Liv Albert?

  He flies down to earth to find the hundred-eyed giant Argus and his prisoner, the cow-woman Io. There Hermes, dressed as a shepherd, puts a reed pipe to his lips and begins to play a tune. Argus hears this and loves it, but the strange song also makes him sleepy, sleepier than expected. He's falling asleep now. Argus asks the god, disguised as the shepherd, how it was that the pipe was invented. But that's a story for a different episode, spoilers, and involves another nymph being raped by another deity, but this time there's a musical instrument invented through her trauma.

• 41:42Liv Albert?

  The pipe, made from a nymph's transformed body, just as Hermes planned, puts the giant Argus Panoptes straight to sleep. From there, it's easy. Hermes isn't a warrior, and this is not a warrior's job. With the guard asleep, Hermes slits his throat with a single slice. Hera, Juno for her part in Ovid, thanks her favorite guardian by placing his deceased hundred all-seeing eyes in the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock. Quote, "Filling its tail with gems that gleam like stars, at once she burns with rage. She does not wait to lodge a ghastly fury into her argive rival's eyes and mind.

• 42:24Liv Albert?

  She buries unseen goads inside her chest, driving her through the world, a fugitive."

• 42:33Liv Albert?

  The peacock bit of the story comes from much later via Ovid, obviously. As far as I understand it, peacocks were unfortunately not in Greece when these mythos were originally being developed, but it's a delightful addition later.

• 42:50Liv Albert?

  But Io wandered. The giant Argus is dead, the goddess Hera is furious, she forces Io into restlessness. Like that, Io wanders and wanders and wanders and wanders until she reaches the Nile River, deep in Egypt. There, at the Nile, Io could finally rest, if just for a moment. Her wandering stops there and she cries, she just pleads to the gods, quote, lamenting, crying, mooing mournfully. Ugh. This, it seems, was enough for Zeus to plead with his wife to make Io's suffering stop.

• 43:34Liv Albert?

  But like with many of Zeus's stories, I think, hey, maybe you could have done this earlier. Or, and maybe this is crazy, just not done all the raping and transforming in the first place.

• 43:48Liv Albert?

  We could have these, like, sexualized origin stories without them being violent. It's fucking wild.

• 43:56Liv Albert?

  Alas, that's impossible, because how else would we instill the origins of culture into the people, except with traumatic, traumatic sexual violence committed against women who are then not really allowed to be part of the people whose culture they are founding with their trauma?

• 44:13Liv Albert?

  All Zeus had to do was ask nicely. And he swears that Io won't cause Hera any further trouble. He promises. And with that, Hera waves a hand and the poor girl transformed back in, from her cow form, into her human, or naiad, or somewhere in between, form. Quote, "The nymph, glad to employ two feet again, stands tall, but fears to speak in case she moo's."

• 44:46Liv Albert?

  Ovid's story of Io's wandering, her transformation, her abject trauma, ends with the conflation of her and the Egyptian goddess Isis. He says she's worshiped there now, as if it's consolation.

• 45:01Liv Albert?

  And not just also like a way of devaluing Egyptian and earlier history. Naturally, Io has a son by Zeus, one that will go on to mythical importance at the expense of his mother's terrible, if culturally defining, trauma. And that's why Argos is called Argos and

• 45:24Liv Albert?

  eventually the story leads to her descendants being the Danaids. Oh, story for another day. And founding that section of the Peloponnese.

• 45:50Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds. Yep. Uh huh.

• 45:58Liv Albert?

  Yep. I don't know. That's what I got. That's what I got. Hey, are you in the UK? My book comes out on Thursday. Isn't that wild? Have you pre-ordered it yet? Uh, The Odyssey of Modern Retailing is available for preorder now and it's coming out on Thursday in the UK. And, uh, in just a few weeks in North America on the 23rd and like, it's cool. It's a lot cooler than all these stories are rape at least. And thank God, I'm just so, I'm so glad we have The Odyssey and the Iliad. Well, I guess less the Iliad. I'm so glad we have The Odyssey because broadly and certainly comparatively, the women are just so well represented and their trauma is like

• 46:40Liv Albert?

  fairly recognized as trauma to a degree, at least comparatively again.

• 46:47Liv Albert?

  That was cool. That's great. I love the Odyssey.

• 46:53Liv Albert?

  Somehow one of the least dramatic of the myths. In any case, you can find a link to my book in the episode's description. Wow, it's so wild and cool. And Let's Talk about Myth May be is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Panga, which is a Hermes to my Olympia, it's my incredible producer, who's off gallivanting the world right now.

• 47:13Liv Albert?

  And select music is by Luke Chaos and the podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network. Stay tuned for more. Hey, I'm gonna hopefully actually turn the shop on my website soon, a thing that I've been meaning to do for a year because ADHD and like paralysis on those like last final little steps is so, so real. It's so real. Wild, wild. I got, I'm working on a big project for a potential book, kind of a new idea. Gosh, I have so many.

• 47:45Liv Albert?

  I wanna, uh, no, I'll drop some hints later. I don't know. I want to get some like audience interactions for this one, but TBD, TBD, that was a tease. I am Liv and I love this shit. I'm so excited for this book. Oh my gosh, I got to write the Odyssey and I own the copyright and oh, dreams, dreams.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  The much awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.

• 49:44Speaker 02

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