Thus the softer mood of the sea-maidens wins upon us. Viewed through it, the resistance of Prometheus begins to look like stubborn self-will; and the decree of Zeus a righteous chastisement. But just as the feeling is gathering strength an episode occurs which reverses the current of emotion. For there rushes suddenly on the desolate scene a strange wild creature, half woman and half beast. Under the curling heifer’s horns there is a fair white brow; and below the brow sweet human eyes, distraught with fear and pain. This is Io, the maid beloved by Zeus. Cast out of her home by the god’s command, she has been chased from the society of her kind, and her fair woman form has been partly changed to bestial shape. For many a weary league she has been goaded onward by the gadfly of Hera; and even now she is haunted by the wraith of Argus, the huntsman of the hundred eyes whom the angry goddess had set to watch her. Good and beautiful she had been, her serene life gladly given to the service of Hera in an Argive temple. Yet now she is doomed to wander restlessly over sea and land, through sun and storm, and by many an unknown lonely path, without apparent aim and for no apparent cause. As her feet stumble up the mountain side and she stands before Prometheus, innocent and mercilessly persecuted, we feel that the moment is crowded with all the elements of tragedy. If we had wavered before, standing on that ridge of neutral ground where the cool airs of reason calm the passions; if the poet meant that we should waver for a moment, giving us in his unifying purpose some perception of the higher power as it would ultimately justify itself; he plunges us now into the arena again, with every emotion clamant to defend these victims of tyranny. As they confront each other, Io speaks, forgetting her own griefs for the moment in contemplation of the suffering titan. “_What land, what people is here? Whom shall I say that I see, Rock-pinioned yonder, Storm-buffeted? To penance of a living death What crime hath doomed thee? Tell me, thou luckless one, Where have I wandered?_ “_Ah me, alas, unhappy! Frenzied again as by the gadfly’s sting, The fatal herdsman with the myriad eyes, The giant Argus, I behold ... Me he pursues, the unhappy, Over sandy leagues of the waste seashore.... Whither alas, ah woe is me When shall my wandering end?_