Argus Panoptes- Greek GiantGiant"The All-Seeing"

The All-Seeing

Argus Panoptes — "the all-seeing" — was a giant with a hundred eyes spread across his body. They slept in shifts, so some were always open. His parentage varies: Apollodorus names him a son of Arestor, while other traditions make him earthborn.

Hera kept him as her enforcer. He caught Echidna, the half-woman half-serpent, asleep in her cave and killed her. He slew a bull that had been ravaging Arcadia. When Zeus took the maiden Io as a lover and hastily transformed her into a white heifer to hide the affair, Hera saw through the disguise. She claimed the cow and set Argus to guard it in her sacred grove at Nemea. By day he grazed the heifer in the open; by night he tethered it to an olive tree and watched. Fifty eyes slept while fifty stayed open. When Io's father Inachus found the cow, she scratched the letters of her name in the dust with her hoof. He wept, but Argus drove the heifer away to a distant pasture.

Hermes and the Peacock

Zeus could not free Io without provoking Hera, so he sent Hermes. Hermes came as a shepherd and sat beside the giant with his reed pipes. He played and told the long, drowsy tale of Pan and the nymph Syrinx — how she fled to the riverbank and became a stand of reeds, how Pan cut them and made his first pipes. Argus fought to stay awake. He wanted to hear the end, but his eyes betrayed him — some closed, then more, until the last few gave way. Hermes touched each lid to make sure it held, then drew his hooked blade and cut off the giant's head. The deed earned him the epithet Argeiphontes — "Slayer of Argus."

Hera gathered her servant's eyes and set them in the tail feathers of her peacock. They shine there still.