The Legend of Peacocks Tail

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Argus was a watchman with a hundred eyes, circling around his head. When he rested, he close just two eyes at once, the other ninety-eight were always wide awake. So it couldn't have been anything but difficult to take away anything that Argus was watching. Presently it happened that Juno, the wife of Jupiter, was exceptionally jealous of a lovely river-nymph, called Io.

Jupiter, in order to spare Io from the jealous outrage of Juno, changed her into a white heifer. Juno, suspecting that the white heifer was truly Io, set Argus with his hundred eyes to watch her. Poor Io was extremely despondent. Her father, the rivergod, did not know her, neither did her sister-nymphs, but rather they used to congratulate the white heifer and encourage it grass from their hands.

Finally Io thought of her name with her foot in the sands of the river bank, and afterward her father and sisters realized that the pretty white heifer was their own Io. She had sooner uncovered herself to her family thusly than Argus pushed her away to a field that lay far once again from the river, where the river-god and the nymphs couldn't come, and afterward put himself down on the highest point of a high slope, which means to watch her more closely than any time in recent memory.

Jupiter felt frustrated about Io, still he didn't set out change her once more into her natural form while Argus was watching her. Yet, recalling how Mercury, when he was not as much as a day old, had stolen away the cattle of Apollo, he now set this prince of thieves, this underhandedness cherishing Mercury, to take Io away from Argus. Mercury thought there could be no better fun.

He dismissed his winged cap and his winged shoes, and dressed like the shepherds in that nation. He conveyed his golden wand, the caduceus, in his hand, and as he strolled along, played thoughtlessly on a shepherd's pipe, at that point, finding a couple of goats sustaining along the edge of the street, he drove them gradually before him.

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Argus discovered his watch rather tedious, and was sufficiently happy to converse with any one who happened to cruise by. He was exceptionally happy when he saw Mercury accompanying the goats, and he welcomed the imagined shepherd to come and sit by him, under the trees in the shade, and play on his pipe and recount stories.

Mercury sat down on a stone by the side of Argus, and started to play softly, so softly that the music resembled the moaning of the wind through the branches of the trees. The day was warm, and there was no other sound aside from the deafening singing of the cicadas. Two of Argus' eyes soon closed. The others may have stayed open if there had not been a sleepy magic in Mercury's piping.

The soft notes came soothingly, slower and slower, and in a steady progression Argus' different eyes started to close, till just two stayed open. These two eyes were splendid, they reasonably twinkled, and they kept their watch on Io through all Mercury's playing. At that point Mercury started to recount stories, and finally the two twinkling eyes closed, similar to the others.

Argus, with all his hundred eyes, was sleeping soundly. To influence him to rest all the more vigorously, Mercury simply touched him daintily with the dream-giving caduceus, and afterward he triumphantly drove Io away. Juno was exceptionally furious when she found that her awesome watchman had rested at his post, laid down with every one of his eyes on the double.

She said he didn't should have such huge numbers of eyes, in the event that he couldn't keep some of them open. So she removed the greater part of his hundred eyes from him, and set them in the tail of her pet peacock, who was extremely pleased to wear them. As far back as that day all peacocks have had eyes in their tails.

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Source:
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