Leucothea

Ino and the infant Dionysus

Leucothea began life as a mortal woman called Ino, a daughter of Cadmus. Her best-known story ends with a leap into the sea, and the ancient accounts tell it in more than one way.

The fullest version comes from Apollodorus, whose book, the Library, retells the Greek myths. Ino and her husband Athamas raise the infant god Dionysus after the death of his mother, Semele. The goddess Hera punishes them by driving them mad. Athamas kills their elder son, Learchus. Ino puts the younger son, Melicertes, into a cauldron. Then she carries the dead child and leaps into the deep sea.

After the fall, both of them take new names. Ino becomes Leucothea, and Melicertes becomes Palaemon. Sailors call them by these names because mother and son rescue sailors caught in storms. Their new role comes from the same sea that took them in. Apollodorus does not say who changed them into gods, and he does not bring back the family that was lost.

The leap at the Molurian Rock

Pausanias, an ancient writer who described the places of Greece, tells the story differently. In his version, Ino jumps into the sea at the Molurian Rock in Megaris, the district around the city of Megara. She takes her younger child with her after Athamas has killed Learchus.

Pausanias gives two reasons for the killing. In one account, Athamas is mad. In another, he is angry because Ino had tricked him earlier, during a famine. This local version has no cauldron.

Pausanias then follows the story past the leap. A dolphin carries the body of Melicertes to the Isthmus of Corinth. There the child is honoured as Palaemon, and the Isthmian games, an athletic festival, are held for him. The harbour below the Molurian Rock is sacred to Leucothea and Palaemon.

Two settings for one goddess

This place of worship ties one change into a goddess to one stretch of coast. It does not make that coast the setting of every story about Leucothea. In the Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem about the long voyage home of the hero Odysseus, the hero never passes the Molurian Rock. The goddess there is already at home on the open sea, and she moves towards a different shore.

The accounts also treat mother and son differently. At Megara the two share a harbour and linked names. In the Odyssey, Leucothea appears alone. Her power sits in one small object, a veil. It leaves her, crosses the surf with Odysseus and has to be given back.

The veil on the broken raft

Poseidon, the god of the sea, raises a wave over Odysseus and breaks his raft apart. Before the timbers scatter, a sea bird rises beside him and turns into a goddess. She gives him a veil. She tells him to tie it under his chest, leave the wreck and swim for the shore of the Phaeacians.

The poem gives her both names. She is Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who once lived as a mortal. She is also Leucothea, now honoured among the gods of the sea. The poem does not explain her past before she acts. It shows the result first: someone who crossed over into godhood now knows how to carry a mortal across the water.

Odysseus does not trust her at once. He fears another trap set by a god and stays on the raft until the sea smashes it. Only then does he tie on the veil and swim. The goddess Athena calms the other winds, a river holds back its current, and after two nights and two days Odysseus reaches land alive.

The veil goes back to the sea

Leucothea’s instructions go on after he survives. Once Odysseus touches land, he must untie the immortal veil, throw it far out into the dark sea and turn his face away. The protection is a loan with a fixed end. He cannot keep it for the next danger.

He obeys after the river carries him out of the breaking waves. A wave takes the veil back down the current, and Ino receives it in her hands. The land he has reached is Scheria, home of the Phaeacians. This collection follows the tradition that places Scheria on Corfu, so the return of the veil ends his last sea crossing before he enters the Phaeacian world.

Nothing in the scene ends Poseidon’s anger or brings Odysseus home. Leucothea steps in only for the short distance between wreck and shore. She comes with the memory of a mortal name, lends the one object that can cross that distance, and waits under the water until it comes back.