581and soon other rivers, which, wherever their impulse carried them, lead down into the sea their waters weary from wandering. 583Inachus alone is missing and, hidden deep in his cave, he swells his waters with tears and, most wretched, mourns his daughter Io as lost. 585He does not know whether she enjoys life or is among the shades; 586but she whom he finds nowhere. 587he thinks is nowhere, and in his mind fears worse. 588Jupiter had seen her returning from her father's river and had said, 'O maiden worthy of Jupiter, who will make some man or other happy with your bed, seek the shade of the deep groves' (and he had pointed out the shade of the groves) 'while it is hot and the sun is highest in the middle of its circle.
593But if you are afraid to enter the lairs of wild beasts alone, you will go safe into the secret places of the groves with a god as protector, and no god of the common crowd, but I who hold the great sceptre of heaven in my hand, I who hurl the wandering thunderbolts. 597Do not flee from me!' – for she was fleeing. 597Already she had left behind the pastures of Lerna and the Lyrcean fields planted with trees, when the god hid the broad lands with a gloom drawn over them, stopped her flight and ravished her chastity. 601Meanwhile Juno looked down into the midst of the fields, and, wondering that flying mists had made the appearance of night under bright day, she perceived that they were not from a river, nor given off by the damp earth; 605and she looks around to see where her husband is, as one who by now knew the stolen loves of a husband caught so often.
607When she did not find him in the sky, she says, 'Either I am mistaken, or I am wronged,' and gliding down from the highest aether she stood on the earth and ordered the mists to withdraw. 610He had foreseen his wife's coming and had changed the daughter of Inachus into a gleaming heifer. 612Even as a cow she is beautiful. 612Saturn's daughter, though unwilling, admires the beauty of the cow, and asks too whose she is, and where from, and of what herd, as if ignorant of the truth. 615Jupiter falsely says she was born from the earth, so that inquiry into her source may cease. 616Saturn's daughter asks for her as a gift.
617What is he to do? 617it is cruel to hand over his love, not to give her is suspicious. 618It is shame that would urge him one way, love dissuades him the other. 619Shame would have been conquered by love; 620but if so slight a gift as a cow were refused to the partner of his race and bed, it could seem not to be a cow. 622Though her rival was given to her, the goddess did not at once put off all her fear, and she feared Jupiter and was anxious about theft, until she handed her over to Argus, son of Arestor, to be guarded. 625Argus had a head ringed with a hundred eyes: from these, two at a time took rest in turn, the rest kept watch and remained on guard.
628Wherever he stood, he was looking at Io: he had Io before his eyes, even with his back turned. 630By day he lets her graze; 630when the sun is beneath the deep earth, he shuts her in and puts chains around her undeserving neck. 632she feeds on the leaves of trees and bitter grass, and instead of a bed the unhappy creature lies on the earth, which does not always have grass, and drinks from muddy streams. 635When she wanted to stretch out her arms to Argus in supplication, she had no arms to stretch out to Argus, and when she tried to complain she uttered lowing from her mouth, and was terrified by the sounds and frightened by her own voice.
639She came also to the banks where she often used to play, the banks of Inachus; 640and when she saw the new horns in the water, she was terrified and fled from herself in panic. 642The Naiads do not know, and Inachus himself does not know, who she is; 643but she follows her father and follows her sisters, and lets herself be touched and offers herself to their admiration. 645Old Inachus had held out grass he had plucked: she licks his hands and gives kisses to her father's palms, and does not hold back her tears and, if only words would follow, she would beg for help and tell her name and misfortunes.
649A letter instead of words, which her hoof traced in the dust, completed the sad disclosure of her changed body. 651'Ah, wretched me!' 651cries father Inachus and, hanging on the horns and the snowy neck of the groaning heifer, 'Ah, wretched me!' 653he repeats; 'are you the daughter I sought through all the lands? 654Unfound, you were a lighter grief than found. 655You are silent and give no words back in answer to mine, you only draw sighs from deep in your breast, and, the one thing you can do, you low back at my words. 658But I, knowing nothing, was preparing a marriage chamber and wedding torches for you, and my first hope was of a son-in-law, my second of grandchildren.
660Now you must have a husband from the herd, now a son from the herd. 661Nor may I end such great sorrows by death, but it harms me to be a god, and the gate of death closed against me extends my grief into eternity?' 664As he mourns so, starry Argus drives him off, and drags away the daughter, snatched from her father, to distant pastures. 666He himself occupies a lofty mountain peak far off, from where, sitting, he keeps watch in all directions. 668Nor can the ruler of the gods bear the great sufferings of Phoroneus' sister any longer, and he calls his son, whom the shining Pleiad bore, and orders him to give Argus over to death.
671There is short delay in taking wings for his feet, the sleep-bringing wand in his powerful hand, and the cap for his hair. 673When he had arranged these, the son of Jupiter leaps down from his father's citadel to the earth. 674There he removed his cap and laid aside his wings; only the wand was kept. 676With this he drives, like a shepherd, through the trackless country goats he gathered as he came, and plays on reeds he has joined together. 678Charmed by the new sound, Juno's guard says, 'You there, whoever you are, you could sit with me on this rock,' – so says Argus – 'for nowhere is the grass richer for flocks, and you see shade fit for shepherds.' 682The grandson of Atlas sat down, and with much talking held back the passing day in conversation, and by playing on the joined reeds tries to overcome the watching eyes.
685But Argus fights to conquer soft sleep and, although slumber has been received by part of his eyes, with part he still keeps awake. 687He asks too (for the pipe had lately been invented) by what means it was invented. 689Then the god said, 'In the cold mountains of Arcadia, among the hamadryads of Nonacris, there was one naiad most celebrated; 691the nymphs called her Syrinx. 692More than once she had eluded the satyrs pursuing her, and whatever gods the shady wood and the fertile country hold. 694She worshipped the Ortygian goddess in her pursuits and in her very virginity. 695Girt too in the style of Diana, she would deceive the eye and could be thought Latona's daughter, if her bow were not of horn and the goddess's of gold.
698Even so she deceived. 698As she was returning from the hill of Lycaeus, Pan sees her and, his head wreathed with sharp pine, speaks such words' – it remained to tell the words, and that the nymph, scorning his prayers, fled through trackless places until she came to the calm stream of sandy Ladon. 703That here, the waters hindering her course, she begged her watery sisters to change her, and that Pan, when he thought he had now caught Syrinx, held marsh reeds instead of the nymph's body. 707And that while he sighed there, the winds stirred in the reed produced a thin sound, like one lamenting. 709That the god, charmed by the new art and the sweetness of its voice, said, 'This union with you shall remain to me!' 711and that so the unequal reeds, joined together by a binding of wax, kept the name of the girl.