Thursday's Term to Learn - Argeiphontes

In connection with Myth Monday's caduceus as medical symbol, I've been reading about the Greek god Hermes. In epic poetry, the epithet argeiphontes is sometimes substituted unambiguously for his name. Traditionally, "argeiphontes" is said to mean "Argus-slayer" and for most purposes, as long as you know who Argus (or Argos) is and that Hermes was his slayer, that is all you will probably need to know.

Argus, child perhaps of Zeus and Niobe, is the eponymous creature of Argos (Oxford Classical Dictionary). You may be familiar with him as Argus Panoptes, the many-eyed monster whose eyes came to grace the tail of Hera's peacock after Hermes killed him. Argus was standing watch over Io on Hera's orders. In this role, Argus is sometimes referred to as a watchdog -- as in a herd-dog watching a heifer, such as Io was. Argeiphontes may thus be the equivalent of "dog-slayer" :

"The names of demons ... recall ... the strange and fearful epithets of Hermes in his role as a thief-demon of sorts, who silences the watch-dog: Argeiphontes (Slayer of the Dog") and Kunangches ("Strangler of the Dog")...."
Christopher Faraone

Rhys Carpenter says argos is an epithet of dogs.

While the Homeric epics refer to Hermes as argeiphontes (Iliad: 14 times; Odyssey: 13, according to Chittenden), the story of the rescue of Io is not told in the works attributed to Homer. That doesn't mean either that Homer knew the story or that he didn't, but for those who think Homer did not know the story, support comes from the epithet argeiphontes itself. As was suggested above when argeiphontes was interpreted as dog-slayer, it is not at all clear that argeiphontes means "Slayer of Argus." It could mean "the brightly shining," based on the idea that argos means "white", "clear", or "swift" (related to argent[um] "silver"), and phaino means "to appear" (Davis). Davis adds that some think the name is a pre-Greek name like Bellerophon (Bellerophontes) or from the Greek for "snake-slayer." In this capacity, argeiphontes is also used of Apollo.

References:

• _{"Argeiphontes: A Suggestion"
  Rhys Carpenter
  American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1950), pp. 177-183}
  
• _{"Argeiphontes in Homer--The Dragon-Slayer"
  S. Davis
  Greece & Rome, Vol. 22, No. 64 (Feb., 1953), pp. 33-38}
  
• _{"Diaktoros Argeiphontes"
  Jacqueline Chittenden
  American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1948), pp. 24-33}
  
• _{"Hipponax Fragment 128W: Epic Parody or Expulsive Incantation?"
  Christopher A. Faraone
  Classical Antiquity, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Oct., 2004), pp. 209-245}
  
• _{"Popular Etymology"
  J. D. Sadler
  The Classical Journal, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Feb. - Mar., 1971), pp. 236-240}
  

Photo:

_{Hermes and Io as a heifer. Side A from a Greek black-figure amphora, 540-530 BC. Found in Italy. © Bibi Saint-Pol.}