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If Io’s father did not “drive [Io] from [her] home” and turn her out to “wander at [her] will,” Zeus would “blot out” all of Io’s people with a fiery thunderbolt. Aeschylus’s language here reflects Io’s existence as a cow.
Io is exiled from her home because Zeus wishes to deflower her. Transformed into a cow, she wanders the earth awaiting salvation. Io is seen as a parallel to Prometheus: though she suffers, in the end she will be freed and rewarded.
Despite his seeming isolation, Prometheus is visited by the ancient god Oceanus, by a chorus of Oceanus’s daughters, by the “cow-headed” Io (another victim of Zeus), and finally by the god Hermes, who vainly demands from Prometheus his knowledge of a secret that could threaten Zeus’s power.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In other ways, too, Prometheus and Io are bound together by fate. The former is a victim of Zeus's hatred, while the latter is a victim of his love. As a tyrant governing by arbitrary laws, Zeus harms everyone in his path. Io's account of her sufferings leaves Hera out of the picture.
A brief dialogue reveals that Prometheus and Io are both victims of Zeus and that in the future Prometheus will eventually be freed by the descendants of Io. Prometheus asks Io to choose: Does she want to hear the rest of her own future, or the name of her descendant that will rescue him?
First, he spoke of his secret knowledge of Zeus's marriage as a means to his eventual deliverance and reconciliation with Zeus. In Io's presence, he spoke of his deliverance and Zeus's downfall without mention of any reconciliation. Here, in the final section, Prometheus speaks only of Zeus's downfall and practically ignores everything else.
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Prometheus is then visited by Io, once a beautiful maiden pursued by the lustful Zeus, but now, thanks to the jealous Hera, transformed into a cow, pursued to the ends of the earth by a biting gadfly.
