INTRODUCTION
We come lastly to a character, which Aeschylus has introduced into this play, although little connected with Prometheus—that of Io. The myth of Io had already become complicated with all sorts of alien elements before the time of Aeschylus: its nucleus, of course, was the local legend of the people of Argos. According to the belief of the Argives, the personality embodied in the Inachos, the river of the Argive plain, was that of the first king of the land. Like all rivers, Inachos was the son of Okeanos (l. 636, cf, Hesiod, Theog. 336): from the great world-river all lesser ones sprang. Io, according to the form of the story here followed, was King Inachos' daughter. The first phase in her story is that Zeus falls in love with her. The next is that she is changed into a cow. The connection of the second phase with the first is somewhat obscure. According to one version, Zeus turned her into a cow to elude the jealousy of Hera; according to another, it was Hera, who did it, in order to conceal her from Zeus. In the Supplices (l. 291 f.) Aeschylus chooses the latter view: in our play it is left vague: Io merely says
xxxiii
