Argus Panoptes (also Argos Panoptes)

On a hillside above the grove at Mycenae, a white heifer cropped the grass and could not take a single step unobserved. Behind her, before her, to either side, the eyes followed. Argus carried a hundred of them set across his body, and they rested only a few at a time, so that some part of him stayed awake and looking no matter the hour. The cow was Io, and she had not always been a cow. The thing watching her did not blink for long.

The sources cannot agree on where such a creature came from. The oldest and most repeated answer is that he was a son of Gaia, the Earth herself, sprung from the ground as an autochthon, which would make him kin to the other vast earthborn things of Greek myth. Other writers gave him a mortal pedigree and a father: Arestor, in the line that produced his name Arestorides, or Inachus the first king of Argos, or Agenor, or a man named Argus before him. One tradition even names his father as Apis, the same Apis whose murder he would later avenge. The disagreement is old enough that the mythographers simply listed the options and moved on. What none of them disputed was the body.

The eye count drifts from teller to teller. The earliest fragment credited to Hesiod gives him only four, one facing each direction, which is enough for a watchman and already strange. By the time of Ovid the number had swelled to the famous hundred, ranged around his head and over his frame, with two at a time taking their turn at sleep. Aeschylus called him myriad-eyed and star-eyed and earthborn all at once, and later poets pushed the tally toward a thousand. The principle held steady even as the arithmetic did not. A creature like this never fully sleeps, and so it never fully stops seeing.

He was more than a curiosity. Argus was a giant of real power, and Arcadia knew him as a deliverer before Hera ever put him to work. A wild bull had been ravaging the region, and he killed it and wore its hide afterward as a cloak. A Satyr had been robbing the herdsmen and assaulting people on the roads, and Argus ambushed and destroyed him. Then there was Echidna, the serpent-bodied mother of monsters, daughter of Tartarus and Earth, who dragged travelers from the roads into her cave. He waited until she slept and killed her where she lay. There is a grim symmetry in that. The watcher who could not be caught sleeping undid his enemy by catching her asleep, and one day the same trick would be turned on him.

His undoing began with someone else’s affair. Zeus had taken up with Io, a priestess of Hera at Argos, and when his wife came looking he turned the girl into a sleek white heifer and swore he had done nothing. Hera was not fooled. She asked for the cow as a gift, and what could he say. She handed the animal to Argus, who tied her to an olive tree in the sacred grove and stood his endless guard. By day he let Io graze; by night he stabled her and looped a halter round her neck. She drank from muddy streams and slept on bare ground, and when she tried to lift her arms to plead with him she had no arms, and when she tried to speak a low moo came out instead. Wherever Argus turned, some of those eyes were on her.

Zeus could not bear it for long and sent Hermes down to end the giant. Hermes came not as a god but as a herdsman, driving a flock of goats and playing a set of reed pipes, and he sat beside Argus on a rock and talked. He spun out the hours with stories, among them the tale of how Pan had chased the nymph Syrinx until she became the very reeds Hermes now played. The music was soft and the afternoon was warm and the drone of the pipe worked through the giant like a drug. One by one the hundred eyes began to close. Argus fought it, and many eyes still kept their watch while others slept, but the song wore them down until the last of them dimmed. Then Hermes drew his blade and struck off the nodding head, and threw it bloody from the rock. The accounts split on the weapon, some saying a stone rather than a sword, but the outcome is the same. So many lights, quenched in a single night. From that killing Hermes earned the title Argeiphontes, the Slayer of Argus.

His strength was never the thing that mattered most about him, and neither was the bull or the Satyr or Echidna. What made him valuable was the seeing, and the seeing was also his one fatal flaw, because eyes that can be lulled are eyes that can be closed. Hera understood the loss better than anyone. She gathered up his hundred eyes and set them into the tail of the peacock, her own sacred bird, where they remain as rings of color that look back at whoever looks at them. The giant who never slept became a pattern of false eyes that see nothing at all. It is, depending on the day, either a reward or a joke.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Argus Panoptes in Greek mythology?

Argus Panoptes is a hundred-eyed giant of Greek mythology from Argolis, known as the perfect watchman because his many eyes never all slept at once. His surname Panoptes means “all-seeing.” He is most famous for guarding the maiden Io after Hera set him to the task, and for being killed by the god Hermes.

Why did Argus have a hundred eyes?

Argus had eyes set all over his body so that he could see in every direction and keep watch without ever fully sleeping, since only a few of his eyes rested at any given time. Ancient sources vary on the exact number, ranging from four in the earliest accounts to a hundred in Ovid and even a thousand in later poetry. The hundred-eyed version became the most familiar.

How did Argus Panoptes die?

Argus was killed by Hermes, who was sent by Zeus to free Io. Disguised as a herdsman, Hermes lulled the giant to sleep with soft music from a set of reed pipes and a long string of stories, closing his hundred eyes one by one. Once every eye had shut, Hermes killed him and earned the title Argeiphontes, “the Slayer of Argus.”

What happened to Argus Panoptes’s eyes?

After Argus died, the goddess Hera preserved his hundred eyes by placing them in the tail of the peacock, her sacred bird. This is the mythological explanation for the eye-like patterns on a peacock’s feathers. It allowed Hera to honor her faithful watchman even in death.

What did Argus Panoptes do before guarding Io?

Before serving Hera, Argus was a protector of Arcadia who used his superhuman strength against several threats. He killed a wild bull that was ravaging the region and wore its hide as a cloak, destroyed a Satyr who robbed and assaulted travelers, and slew the monster Echidna while she slept. He also avenged the murder of Apis by killing the culprits.

Related Entries

Io, Hermes, Hera, Zeus, Echidna, Pan, Gaia, Callisto, Talos, Typhon, Hecatonchires, Gigantes, Cerberus, Medusa