Io
mythological figure · 4 works · 5 mentions · 10 anchored passages
daughter of Inachus · the heifer-mother
in the texts
Stromata
Mythological figure used as a chronological marker for Apis's medical invention.
Medicine they say Apis, an Egyptian aboriginal, invented before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius increased the art.
and Triopas is contemporary with Isis in the seventh generation from Inachus (and they say Isis is the same as Io, because she went, wandering, through the whole earth);
Under Triopas were Prometheus and Atlas and Epimetheus and the two-natured Cecrops and Io.
Phoenissae
Mythical maiden transformed into a horned heifer, ancestress claimed by both the Phoenician Chorus and the Theban royal line.
and Io, our horned ancestress, was mother of the kings of Thebes;
And you, Epaphus, born from Io, our first mother, and child of Zeus:
we are all children of Io, the horned maid;
Suppliants
Mythic ancestress of the Argive royal line, transformed into a heifer and beloved of Zeus, invoked by the chorus in their prayer for the city's safety.
O Zeus, father to the child the heifer-mother bore in days long past, that daughter of Inachus!
’Tis thy own darling, thy own settler in the city of Argos that I am striving to rescue for the funeral pyre from outrageous insult.
The Histories
Daughter of Inachus, king of Argos; her abduction by Phoenicians initiates the chain of retaliatory seizures
On the fifth or sixth day after their arrival, when their wares were almost all sold, many women came to the shore and among them especially the daughter of the king, whose name was Io (according to Persians and Greeks alike), the daughter of Inachus.
Next, according to their story, some Greeks (they cannot say who) landed at Tyre in Phoenicia and carried off the king's daughter Europa.
Io and others were seized and thrown into the ship, which then sailed away for Egypt.