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Truly Intense Vengeance Stories From Greek Mythology

Khalid Elhassan June 14, 2021 35 min

The twelve major Olympian gods. Pintrest

Hera discovering Zeus with his lover Io, by Pieter Lastman. Wikimedia

17. Zeus Turned His Mistress Into a Cow to Hide Her From His Wife

A homeless Io finally gave in to Zeus. To conceal her from his jealous wife and shield her from Hera’s vengeance, the chief god turned Io into a white heifer. It did not work. Hera knew her husband and brother all too well. She began to get suspicious when she noticed just how much time he was spending at a pasture, in which a magnificent white cow grazed. So she asked Zeus to give her the heifer as a present.

Zeus could not think up a good excuse to refuse Hera’s request, so he grudgingly gave his love to his wife as a gift. Hera then assigned Argus Panoptes, a giant with a hundred eyes, to tether the white cow to an olive tree, and keep a constant watch on her. Zeus, driven to distraction by his lust for Io, was unable to bear the separation. So he sent the messenger god Hermes, disguised as a shepherd, to lull Argus to sleep.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.