She charged him to "Tether this cow safely to an olive-tree at Nemea". Argos was meant to be the perfect guardian. She required someone who had at least a hundred eyes spread out, always watching in all directions, someone who would stay awake despite being asleep. Hera's defining task for Argus was to guard the white heifer Io from Zeus, who was attracted to her, keeping her chained to the sacred olive tree at the Argive Heraion. His great service to the Olympian pantheon was to slay the chthonic serpent-legged monster Echidna as she slept in her cave. In the 2nd century AD Pausanias noted at Argos, in the temple of Zeus Larissaios, an archaic image of Zeus with a third eye in the center of his forehead, allegedly Priam's Zeus Herkeios purloined from Troy. In the 5th century and later, Argus' wakeful alertness was explained for an increasingly literal culture as his having so many eyes that only a few of the eyes would sleep at a time: there were always eyes still awake. And the goddess stirred in him unwearying strength: sleep never fell upon his eyes but he kept sure watch always. The epithet Panoptes, reflecting his mythic role, set by Hera as a very effective watchman of Io, was described in a fragment of a lost poem Aigimios, attributed to Hesiod: Īnd set a watcher upon her, great and strong Argus, who with four eyes looks every way. Hermes and Argus : Velázquez renders the theme of stealth and murder in modern dress, 1659 ( Prado)
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