![]() ![]() An aspect of life that these tombstones bring to light is the strong emotions that tied together spouses, family members, and friends. In a few brief sentences, this man’s colorful life, during which he passed from freedom to slavery to freedom and ultimately to prosperity, is memorialized. “In your care I will be released from my worries” (CIL 11.137). The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What Have the Greeks and Romans Done for Us? Take away the fanciful elements and the metamorphoses, and you have a classic story of an unfaithful husband confronted by an angry wife who tries to get even with the other woman.” Hera takes all of the eyes from Argus’ corpse and puts them on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock. Not done, Hera sends a gadfly to chase Io (an apt choice for hassling a cow), which stings her all the way to Egypt. ![]() Zeus sends in the god Hermes to tell him a boring, endless story, which gradually puts Argus to sleep, one eye at a time then Hermes kills him and frees Io. Hera, not fooled, seizes the cow and places her under the guard of a giant named Argus Panoptes (“All-Seeing”) because his body is covered with one hundred eyes (making him, quite literally, the first private eye called in by a wife to intervene in a case of adultery). ![]() “As an example, when Zeus is dallying with the nymph Io, Hera spots them, so he turns Io into a lovely white heifer. ![]()
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