Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video we're discussing Argus, the monstrous thousand-eyed giant Hera set to guard Io, a woman Zeus transformed into a cow after forcing himself on her. Let's get into it.Called the Panoptes, meaning All-Seeing-One, Argus was a monstrous giant, a giant herdsman with eyes all over his body. Accounts describing exactly how many eyes he did have vary, ranging from as few as four to as many as 1,000.Argus was blessed with incredible strength, which he used on many occasions to eliminate threats terrorizing the land. He slayed a fearsome bull that was ravaging the countryside. He killed a satyr that was robbing people, and there's even an account of him killing Echidna who was preying on travelers. Echidna was sometimes called the queen of monsters, for she birthed many of the monsters in Greek mythology, including the hydra, the chimera, and the sphinx. Though many monsters fell to his might, the myth Argus most prominently featured in was the overpowering and subsequent transformation of Io. She was the daughter of Inachus, a river god, and her mother's identity, while more ambiguous, is sometimes said to be one of the Oceanid nymphs. As was so often the case, in a mythic world where gods and monsters abounded, beauty was as much a curse as it was a blessing, especially when one caught the eye of Zeus, whose roaming, lecherous gaze so often brought ruin to those who pleased it.
