Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Electra

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τῆς οἰστροπλ … Ἰνάχου κόρης. The Inachus (now the Bonitza) rises in the highlands between Arcadia and Argolis; flows N.E. , and then S.E. , through the Argive plain; and enters the Gulf on the east side of the town. This river-god figured as the earliest king of Argos. Cp. the Inachus of Sophocles, fr. 248 “Ἴναχε νᾶτορ, παῖ τοῦ κρηνῶν” | “πατρὸς” “Ὠκεανοῦ, μέγα πρεσβεύων” | “Ἄργους τε γύαις Ἥρας τε πάγοις” | “καὶ Τυρσηνοῖσι Πελασγοῖς”.

His daughter Io, the first priestess of Hera, was loved by Zeus, and changed by the jealous goddess into a cow. The hundred-eyed Argus, charged by Hera to watch her, bound her to an olive-tree in the temenos of the Heraeum ( Apollod. 2. 1. 3). Hermes slew Argus; and Hera then sent the gad-fly which drove Io forth from Argolis on her wanderings. Cp. Aesch. P. V. 681“οἰστροπλὴξ δ᾽ ἐγὼ” | “μάστιγι θείᾳ γῆν πρὸ γῆς ἐλαύνομαι”. Io, the horned wanderer, was originally, like Hera herself, a moon-goddess.

ἄλσος, the whole region, regarded as ground which her story has made sacred: “ἔλεγον γὰρ πᾶν χωρίον ἀφιερωμένον θεῷ, κἂν ψιλὸν φυτῶν ᾖ, ἄλσος” (schol. Pind. O. 3. 31). So Soph. Ant. 845“Θήβας τ᾽ εὐαρμάτου ἄλσος” (n.): Pind. N. 10. 19“Ἀργεῖον..τέμενος” (‘the sacred Argive land’). In Suppl. 538 ff. the Danaides at Argos say:—‘We have come hither, into the ancient footsteps of our mother (Io), to the flowery meads of the watcher (Argus), where the cow was pastured, and whence, vexed by the gad-fly, she fled in frenzy.’