De Incredibilibus

They say that Io was a woman who was turned into a cow and, goaded by a gadfly, she crossed the sea from Argos and came to Egypt. This is implausible: the very idea that...[*](There is a lacuna in the text here.) she could survive so many days without food!

The truth is as follows. Io was the daughter of the king of Argos. The people from the city did her the honour of making her priestess of Argive Hera. She fell pregnant and, afraid of her father and the townspeople, fled the city. The Argives went out searching, and, had they found her anywhere, would have apprehended her and put her in chains. [*](We translate Stern’s suggestion of replacing the transmitted sentence with a contrary-to-fact statement.) So they would say, She’s like a cow: she’s goaded and she flees....[*](There is a lacuna in the text here.) In the end, she handed herself over to some foreign traders and begged them to take her to Egypt. After arriving there she gave birth. And so the myth was fabricated.

They say that Medeia made old men young again by boiling them. But no-one can prove that she made anyone young: if she boiled someone, she surely killed them.

Something like this happened. Medeia was the first to discover black and red dyes. She made the hair of old men seem black and auburn: by applying dyes she changed white hair into black and auburn. …[*](There is a lacuna in the text here.) Medeia was the first to discover that steam baths were beneficial for people. She ran baths in secret for those who wanted them, and made them swear an oath not to mention it to anyone, to prevent any of the physicians from finding out. The name of this bathing technique was ‘boiling’. People who had these baths became healthier and more relaxed. For this reason, and because they saw her with a cauldron and fire, they believed that she was boiling people. Pelias, a frail old man, died in the bath. And from this the myth arose.