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(663). Ostensibly this is an allusion to the war which they pray will never engulf Argos, but the connection with their own war and with their own preoccupation with flowers is clear.22 |
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In an earlier passage the Danaids were likewise led from thoughts of an omnipotent and omniscient father (139) to the protection of their virginity and the role of Io, who again is referred to not as ancestress but as mother: |
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May the great seed of a holy mother,
escaping the beds of men,
remain unmarried and inviolate. (141143) |
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In the initial strophe of the tragedy, the Danaids also speak of Io's fondness for flowers ( , "flower-browsing", 43);23 in the antistrophe they again refer to Io as mother: |
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Invoking him, Epaphos,
now in the browsing
places of mother long ago,
recalling former sufferings,
now I will show
faithful proofs to those who inhabit this land (4954) |
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In this passage  is ambiguous, since it may refer to either the Danaids or Epaphos ( 49).24 The ambiguity is consistent with the projection of Zeus as the oedipal father and of Io as the oedipal mother. The child of Zeus and Io is also the child of the fantasized parents of the Danaids and therefore equivalent to the Danaids themselves. The identification of the Danaids with Epaphos, ambiguously suggested at 51, is strengthened when the Danaids call upon Zeus not to dishonor the "child of the cow" (170171). As Murray says, |
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22 See Whittle (1964) for discussions of the importance of Io's "flowery diet" (27) and the use of flowers as a means of identification between the Danaids and Io (2627). |
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23 For the reading  see Whittle (1964) 2429. Surely it is the sexual connotation of flowers which makes their gathering the standard occupation of the ravished maidens of antiquity, a custom noted in Dale (1967) 82, n. 244. |
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24 Murray (1958) 69 thinks it refers to the Danaids, while Rose (1957) 20 thinks it refers to Epaphos. |
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