the town of Argos. He was succeeded by
his son, Pelasgus, from whom the aforementioned races of the south
derived their name. Io, the divine sister of Phoroneus, had the good
fortune, or perhaps misfortune, to attract the attention of the
all-loving Zeus and as a consequence incurred the enmity of Hera. She
is transformed into a beautiful heifer by Zeus, but a gadfly sent by
Hera torments her until she is driven mad and starts upon those famous
wanderings which became the subject of many of the most celebrated
stories of antiquity. AEschylus reviews her roamings in his great
tragedy, "Prometheus Bound," and makes Io to arrive at Mount Caucasus
to which the fire-bringer is chained. It is here that Prometheus
delivers to her the oracle given him by his mother, Themis,
Titan-born. He directs her to Canobos, a city on the Nile, and tells
her that there Zeus will restore her mind.

"and thou shalt bear a child
Of Zeus begotten, Epaphos, 'Touchborn,'
Swarthy of hue."

Aryan parents do not usually bear black children and to show that
AEschylus was thoroughly cognizant of the ethnical relationship here
implied, permit me to quote from "The Suppliants," another of his
tragedies. The Suppliants were the fifty daughters of Danaus, the
Shepherds of Egypt, and they described themselves as, "We, of swart
sunburnt race," "our race that sprang from Epaphos," and when they
appear before the Argive king, claiming his country as their ancestral
home, their color causes him to question their claims in the following
words:

"Nay, stranger, what ye tell is past belief
For me to hear, that ye from Argos spring;
For ye to Libyan women are most like,
And nowise to our native maidens here.
Such race might Neilos breed, and Kyprian mould,
Like yours, is stamped by skilled artificers
On women's features; and I hear that those
Of India travel upon camels borne,
Swift as the horse, yet trained as sumpter-mules,
E'en those who as the AEthiops' neighbors dwell.
And had ye borne the bow, I should have guessed,
Undoubting, ye were of the Amazon tribe."

No, AEschylus made no mistake. He meant just what he wrote and the
discoveries of the wonderful Minoan civilization have proven that the
swarthy touch-born son of Zeus and Io was the incarnation of the
African element that raised Greece to the very pinnacle of
civilization. Minos is in direct descent from Epaphos and from the
latt