Io

Io is the daughter of the river god Inachus of Argos. A priestess in the service of Hera at her temple in Argos, she caught the eye of Zeus. A secret affair followed. When Hera, suspicious, descended to Earth to catch her husband, Zeus quickly transformed Io into a magnificent white heifer to conceal her. Hera, not fooled, demanded the beautiful heifer as a gift. Zeus, forced to comply so as not to arouse further suspicion, obliged.

Hera entrusted the surveillance of Io to the giant Argus Panoptes — "Argus who sees all" — a guardian with a hundred eyes, fifty of which always remained open while the other fifty slept. None could approach Io without him seeing. Zeus, despairing of freeing his beloved, sent Hermes.

The messenger god approached Argus disguised as a shepherd, sat beside him and told him an infinitely long and boring story, accompanied by the bewitching sound of his syrinx. One by one, the giant's hundred eyes closed. Hermes then cut off his head. In tribute to her faithful guardian, Hera placed his hundred eyes on the tail of the peacock — her sacred animal, whose plumage has since borne those iridescent "eyes".

Her revenge unsatisfied, Hera sent a gadfly to sting the heifer relentlessly and drive her mad. Io fled across countless lands, maddened by pain and the insect. On Mount Caucasus, she encountered Prometheus, still chained to the rock by Zeus. The titan revealed to her that her deliverance would come on the banks of the Nile. Io pressed on.

Along the way, she crossed the strait separating Europe from Asia — which the Ancients named Bosphorus ("ford of the cow") in memory of her crossing. The sea that bore her name was called the Ionian Sea. In Egypt, Zeus restored Io's human form. She gave birth to Epaphus, who was identified with the sacred bull Apis, and Io with the goddess Isis.

The myth of Io is intimately linked to the Taurus constellation. The white heifer of Zeus, symbol of beauty and bovine power, is at the origin of several associations between the bull and the gods — a symbolism that the Taurus constellation perpetuates in the sky.

In Saint Seiya, the Gold Saint of Taurus is Aldebaran — whose name is that of the brightest star in the constellation. A giant of colossal proportions and incomparable brute strength, Aldebaran embodies the telluric power of the mythological bull. His cosmos, linked to the earth and primal force, echoes the sacred ox of the ancients, that divine animal of which Io was the involuntary incarnation.