Idomeneus, legendary
Cretan king, the son of Deucalion and the grandson of King Minos of Crete.
A suitor of Helen of Troy, he was one of the most valiant of the Greeks
in the Trojan War. Beset by a violent storm on his way home from the war,
he vowed to the sea god Poseidon that should he arrive home safely, he
would make a sacrifice of the first living thing he met. The first to meet
him when he landed was his own son, but he nevertheless fulfilled his vow.
When a plague broke out on Crete, however, he was banished by his subjects.
He fled to Calabria in Italy and then to Colophon in Asia Minor, where
he is reputed to be buried.
Io , daughter of the river
god Inachus. She was loved by the god Zeus, who changed her into a white
heifer to protect her from the jealousy of his wife, Hera. Suspecting that
the animal was really Zeus's mistress, Hera asked for the heifer as a gift
and set the 100-eyed monster Argus to guard it. Because the monster never
slept with all his eyes shut, Io was unable to escape until Zeus sent his
son, the messenger god Hermes, to rescue her. Hermes managed to kill the
monster after he had put Argus's 100 eyes to sleep with a series of boring
stories. Hera was still angry, however, and next sent a gadfly to torment
Io, who wandered over the earth in misery. Io finally swam across the sea
that was later named for her (the Ionian Sea) and at last reached Egypt.
There she was restored to her original physical form, and she bore Zeus
a son, Epaphus, who was an ancestor of the Greek hero Hercules.
Iphigenia, eldest daughter
of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Before the Trojan War, when the Greek forces
prepared to sail from Aulis for Troy, a strong north wind held the thousand
Greek ships in the harbor. A soothsayer revealed that Artemis, goddess
of the hunt, was angry because the Greeks had slain one of the wild animals
she protected. The only way to appease the goddess and gain favorable winds
for the ship was to sacrifice Iphigenia. Agamemnon, fired by his ambition
to conquer Troy, agreed to the sacrifice. He summoned his daughter from
Mycenae, telling her she was to marry Achilles, the greatest of the Greek
warriors. When the maiden arrived in Aulis, she was carried to Artemis's
altar and slain. At once the north wind stopped blowing and the Greek ships
set sail for Troy. In the plays of the ancient Greek poet Euripides, Iphigenia
was not sacrificed. Artemis, who would not permit her altar to be defiled
with human blood, substituted a deer for the sacrifice and carried Iphigenia
to the land of the Taurians (modern Crimea). There she became the chief
priestess of Artemis's temple. After many years she was rescued by her
brother, Orestes, and returned with him to Mycenae.
Iris , goddess of the rainbow,
the daughter of the Titan Thaumas and Electra, daughter of the Titan Oceanus.
As messenger of the god Zeus and his wife, Hera, Iris left Olympus only
to convey the divine commands to humankind, by whom she was regarded as
an adviser and guide. Traveling with the speed of the wind, she could go
from one end of the earth to the other, and to the bottom of the sea or
to the depths of the underworld. Although she was a sister of the winged
monsters, the Harpies, Iris was represented as a beautiful maiden, with
wings and robes of bright colors and a halo of light on her head, trailing
across the sky with a rainbow in her wake.
Ixion, the first man to
murder one of his kinspeople. He killed his father-in-law to avoid giving
him promised bridal gifts. After obtaining purification from the god Zeus,
Ixion ungratefully sought to seduce Hera, the wife of Zeus. To foil Ixion,
Zeus created a cloud in Hera's image; Ixion was deceived and consequently
sired the monstrous Centaurs. As punishment, Ixion was bound to a wheel
that revolved eternally in the underworld.
