Hera/Juno, offered the head of Argus by Hermes, places his eyes in the peacock's tail, in a decoration by Jacopo Amigoni (ca 1682 - 1752)

In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes, brother to the nymph Io, was a giant with a hundred eyes. His epithet means all-seeing, reflecting that he was a very effective watchman, as only a few of the eyes would sleep at a time; there were always eyes still awake. Argus was Hera's servant. His great service to the Olympian pantheon was to slay the chthonic serpent-legged monster Echidna as she slept in her cave (Homer, Iliad ii.783; Hesiod, Theogony, 295ff; Apollodorus, ii.i.2). Hera's last task for Argus was to guard a white heifer from Zeus. She charged him to "Tether this cow safely to an olive-tree at Nemea". Hera knew that the heifer was in reality Io, one of the many nymphs Zeus was coupling with to establish a new order. To free Io, Zeus had Argus slain by Hermes. Hermes, disguised as a shepherd, first put all of Argus's eyes asleep with boring stories. To commemorate her faithful watchman, Hera had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, in a peacock's tail (Ovid I, 625). Download high resolution version (772x880, 111 KB)Juno Receiving the Head of Argos by Jacopo Amigoni (1730-32) Oil on canvas, 108 x 72 cm. ... Download high resolution version (772x880, 111 KB)Juno Receiving the Head of Argos by Jacopo Amigoni (1730-32) Oil on canvas, 108 x 72 cm. ... Categories: Artist stubs | 1682 births | 1752 deaths | Italian painters ... // Greek mythology consists in part in a large collection of narratives that explain the origins of the world and detail the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... This article is about the mythological figure. ... In Greek mythology, Panoptes (the all-seeing) was an epithet for both Helios and Argus. ... In the Olympian pantheon of classical Greek Mythology, Hêra (IPA pronunciation: ; Greek or ) was the wife and sister of Zeus. ... In mythology chthonic (from Greek χθονιος-pertaining to the earth; earthy) designates, or pertains to, gods or spirits of the underworld, especially in Greek mythology. ... Serpent is a word of Latin origin (serpens, serpentis) that is normally substituted for snake in a specifically mythic or religious context, in order to distinguish such creatures from the field of biology. ... In the most ancient layers of Greek mythology Echidna (ekhis, meaning she viper) was called the Mother of All Monsters. Echidna was described by Hesiod as a female monster spawned in a cave, who mothered with her mate Typhoeus or Typhon every major monster in the Greek mythos, (Theogony, 295... The Homère Caetani bust at the Louvre, a 2nd century Roman copy of a 2nd century BC Greek original. ... The Iliad (Ancient Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) is, along with the Odyssey, one of the two major Greek epic poems traditionally attributed to Homer, a supposedly blind Ionian poet. ... Hesiod (Hesiodos, ), the early Greek poet and rhapsode, presumably lived around 700 BCE. Historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer, and some authors have even brought them together in an imagined poetic contest. ... Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of ancient Greek religion. ... Apollodorus was a common name in ancient Greece. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ... Nemea is an ancient site near the head of the valley of the Nemea River in the Peloponnessus of Greece. ... Hermes bearing the infant Dionysus, by Praxiteles Hermes (Greek IPA ), in Greek mythology, is the god of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of orators, literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and invention and commerce in general, of liars, and of... Engraved frontispiece of George Sandyss 1632 London edition of Publius Ovidius Naso (Sulmona, March 20, 43 BC â€“ Tomis, now Constanta AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid, wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. ...

See also

• Argus