The "Other Women"

The stories of Io and of Europa are stories of the so-called “other women”. They are called by many names: Third party. Mistress. Lover. Paramour. (Which came from the Latin para ‘alongside’ + amor ‘love’. Not the same as the band Paramore) There are many reasons why women get involved with affairs with married men; but to be fair, these two women never sought to be mistress. It was the unstoppable lust of Zeus that made it so.

 

Juno discovers Jupiter with Io (Image via HellenicaWorld.Com)

 

Io was a mortal woman whom Zeus took as one of his lovers. He was afraid to be discovered by his wife Hera but his desire for Io was greater. So he went down and covered himself and Io in a thick cloud. Of course Hera knows this can only mean Zeus is up to no good again. (Guys act strangely when they’re with somebody else, right girls?) When she went down too, she discovered her husband with a white heifer (year-old cow), which is Io in disguise. “Who is that?” Hera asked. “Oh it’s nothing; just a cow,” Zeus answer. When guys are hiding a mistress, they say, “Oh, it’s nothing; she’s just a friend/business partner/study partner” etc. etc. (Isn’t that true also, girls?) You can read the whole story of Io here; including how she was placed under the guard of Argus, was freed by Hermes, and was chased by a gad-fly from Hera. She leapt across the strait between Asia and Europe which eventually became known as the Bosphorus, ‘the ford of the cow’.

 

In the movie Taken 2, father and daughter Bryan and Kim were taking a ferry ride in the Bosphorus. Bryan cites the strategic importance of the narrow body of water:

BRYAN: On this side is Europe, and the other side is Asia. And every conquest since,  for the last 2,500 years... whether it was the West going East or the East going West... they all used this very same waterway.

KIM: How do you know all this stuff?

BRYAN: How do I know it? I read it in a book on the flight over.



 A two-Euro coin from Greece depicting the rape (which meant 'kidnapping' back then) of Europa. (Image via HellenicaWorld.Com)

Europa was a princess from Sidon (whose people are known seafarers). She was with her friends beside the sea, doing girly things like playing games and picking flowers (her basket contains pictures of the story of Io) when Zeus saw her. In order to hide himself (guys often disguise themselves when they are fooling around), he disguised himself as a white bull. He took her on his back and ran in the middle of the Mediterranean from Sidon to Crete, the island he was born. She would bear Zeus Minos and Rhadamanthus, whose justice on earth made them judges of the dead in the Underworld.  The continent of Europe was eventually named after her, and she is depicted in the European Union’s currency, the Euro.

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 Speaking of ‘other women’, it seems that there has been a spate of ‘infidelity films’ and ‘infidelity shows’ recently. Movies like No Other Woman, My Neighbor’s Wife, The Mistress (where a son has an affair with his father’s mistress), A Secret Affair, and television programs such as My Husband’s Lover (about a homosexual affair) and For Love or Money (about an affair with an richer, “older” woman). For more information, you can read the article “What’s with the third party syndrome in the PH?” by Maridol Rañoa-Bismark on Yahoo! Philippines OMG!