Among other stories, Mercury told him how the instrument on which he played was invented.  “There was a certain nymph, whose name was Syrinx, who was much beloved by the satyrs and spirits of the wood; but she would have none of them, but was a faithful worshipper of Diana, and followed the chase.  You would have thought it was Diana herself, had you seen her in her hunting dress, only that her bow was of horn and Diana’s of silver.  One day, as she was returning from the chase, Pan met her, told her just this, and added more of the same sort.  She ran away, without stopping to hear his compliments, and he pursued till she came to the bank of the river, where he overtook her, and she had only time to call for help on her friends the water nymphs.  They heard and consented.  Pan threw his arms around what he supposed to be the form of the nymph, and found he embraced only a tuft of reeds!  As he breathed a sigh, the air sounded through the reeds, and produced a plaintive melody.  The god, charmed with the novelty and with the sweetness of the music, said, ’Thus, then, at least, you shall be mine.’  And he took some of the reeds, and placing them together, of unequal lengths, side by side, made an instrument which he called Syrinx, in honor of the nymph.”  Before Mercury had finished his story he saw Argus’s eyes all asleep.  As his head nodded forward on his breast, Mercury with one stroke cut his neck through, and tumbled his head down the rocks.  O hapless Argus! the light of your hundred eyes is quenched at once!  Juno took them and put them as ornaments on the tail of her peacock, where they remain to this day.

But the vengeance of Juno was not yet satiated.  She sent a gadfly to torment Io, who fled over the whole world from its pursuit.  She swam through the Ionian sea, which derived its name from her, then roamed over the plains of Illyria, ascended Mount Haemus, and crossed the Thracian strait, thence named the Bosphorus (cow-ford), rambled on through Scythia, and the country of the Cimmerians, and arrived at last on the banks of the Nile.  At length Jupiter interceded for her, and upon his promising not to pay her any more attentions Juno consented to restore her to her form.  It was curious to see her gradually recover her former self.  The coarse hairs fell from her body, her horns shrank up, her eyes grew narrower, her mouth shorter; hands and fingers came instead of hoofs to her forefeet; in fine there was nothing left of the heifer, except her beauty.  At first she was afraid to speak, for fear she should low, but gradually she recovered her confidence and was restored to her father and sisters.

In a poem dedicated to Leigh Hunt, by Keats, the following allusion to the story of Pan and Syrinx occurs: 

    “So did he feel who pulled the bough aside,
     That we might look into a forest wide,

     Telling us how fair trembling Syrinx fled
     Arcadian Pan, with such a fearful dread. 
     Poor nymph—­poor Pan—­how he did weep to find
     Nought but a lovely sighing of the wind
     Along the reedy stream; a half-heard strain. 
     Full of sweet desolation, balmy pain.”