Argos (person)

Αργος

Several characters bear this name.

1. The first Argos was the son of Zeus and Niobe and on his mother's side descended from Oceanus and Tethys (Table 17). Niobe was the first mortal to have children by Zeus. Argos received as his share the sovereignty of the Peloponnese, which he called Argos (a name which stayed attached to the city of that name, and the Argolid, the area around it). He married Evadne, the daughter of Strymon and Neaera (or alternatively of Peitho, a daughter of Oceanus) and had four sons (Table 18 and, to illustrate another tradition, Table 17). Argos was supposed to have introduced the practice of tilling the soil and planting corn into Greece.
    
2. The best known Argos, generally known by the Latinized form of his name, Argus, was the great-grandson of the first. Some versions of the story give him a single eye, while others say he had four, two looking forward and two backwards. Yet other traditions ascribe to him a large number of eyes all over his body. Endowed with prodigious strength, he freed Arcadia from a bull which was laying the country waste. He then flayed ir and clothed himself in its hide. Next he killed a Satyr which was harming the Arcadians and carrying off their flocks. Then he slew Echidna, the monstrous daughter of Tartarus who was seizing passers-by, by overcoming her in her sleep. Hera then enjoined him to watch over the heifer Io, of whom she was jealous. In order to do this, Argos tethered it to an olive tree which was growing in a sacred wood at Mycenae. Thanks to his many eyes, of which only half were ever shut at one time, he could keep a watch on it. But Hermes was bidden by Zeus to free Io, whom he loved. As usual with Hermes, there are varying accounts of how he achieved this task: sometimes he is said to have killed Argos by throwing a stone from a distance, sometimes to have sent him to sleep by playing to him on Pan pipes; and in another version he plunged him into a magic sleep with his divine wand. In any event Hermes killed Argos. Hera, to give immortality to her faithful servant, moved his eyes to the tail of the bird that was sacred to him, the peacock.
    
3. The third Argos was the son of Phrixus and Chalciope. He was born and brought up in Colchis, but left to go and claim his inheritance from his grandfather, Athamas. He was shipwrecked on the island of Aria, where he was sheltered by the Argonauts, together with his brothers Phrontis, Melas and Cytissorus. Another version says that he met Jason at the house of Aeetes, in Colchis. It was he who, through the agency of his mother, is said to have brought about the first meeting between Jason and Medea. He came back with the Argonauts. In Greece he married Perimele, the daughter of Admetus, and by her he had a son, Magnes (Table 33).
    
4. The Argos who built the ship Argo (see Argonauts) and took part in the expedition in search of the Golden Fleece, seems to have been yet a fourth character. Homever he is sometimes regarded as being the son of Arestor, a relationship also claimed for Argos 2, and sometimes confused with the son of Phrixus (Argos 3).

{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}

Table of Sources:

1. - Apollod. Bibl. 2, 1, 1ff.
   - Hyg. Fab. 123; 145; 155
   - Paus. 2, 16, 1; 2, 22, 6; 2, 34, 5; 3, 4, 1
    
2. - Apollod. Bibl. 2, 1, 3
   - Hyg. Fab. 145
   - Macrob. Sat. 1, 19, 12
   - Prop. 1, 3, 20
   - Ovid. Met. 1, 583ff.
    
3. - Hyg. Fab. 14
   - Apoll. Rhod. Arg. 2, 1122ff.
   - Apollod. Bibl. 1, 8, 9
    
4. - Schol. on Apoll. Rhod., Arg. 1, 4
   - Ptol. Heph. 2
   - Apoll. Rhod. Arg. 1, 324ff.