In answer to her surprised inquiries, the hero tells her his name and the cause of his sufferings; and she asks him, as a prophet, what the end of her own wanderings will be. He would at first conceal from her knowledge which could only give her pain, but he yields at last to her request; yet before he proceeds to the prophecy, Io herself, at the request of the Chorus, narrates the history of her past life. When a girl in her father's home, she was visited by frequent dreams which told her of the love of Zeus. Her father Inachus, on hearing of those portents, consulted many times the oracles of Delphi and Dodona, and at last was told to drive her from his doors. Reluctantly he did so; and straightway she became a horned heifer, and the gadfly came to madden her, and the giant herdsman Argus with his innumerable eyes to watch her, and even his death, by the hand of Apollo, failed to free her from his constant pursuit. And so she is driven from land to land. The Chorus bewail her incredible griefs, but Prometheus tells them that the worst is still to hear. She must yet go through the land of the nomad Scythians, and round the Black Sea's coast, to the dwellings of the Chalybes, the inhospitable race who work in iron; and thence, across the starry peaks of Caucasus to the country of the Amazons, and on through many wild regions, to the Bosporus, whose name, meaning Ox-ford, will be derived from her journey. And this is only the beginning of her troubles. Her sufferings are grievous indeed, but death will bring an end to them; for Prometheus there is no respite "till Zeus be hurled out from his
