Glaucus

Pausanias gives the local account from Anthedon, a town on the coast of Boeotia. He reports the belief that Glaucus was a fisherman who ate a certain grass and turned into a deity of the sea. Ever since, Pausanias says, he has foretold the future to men, and seafaring men tell every year many tales about his soothsaying (Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.22.7). Pausanias also names a place by the sea there called the Leap of Glaucus (Description of Greece 9.22.6). He adds that Pindar and Aeschylus took a story about Glaucus from the people of Anthedon, and that Aeschylus made it into a play (Description of Greece 9.22.7).

Apollonius of Rhodes uses Glaucus as a seer in the voyage of the Argo. After the ship has left Heracles behind in Mysia, Glaucus rises from the deep sea. Apollonius calls him the wise interpreter of divine Nereus. He seizes the keel and tells the crew that Heracles is fated to labour for Eurystheus and to complete twelve toils. He adds that Polyphemus will found a city among the Mysians and that a nymph has made Hylas her husband (Argonautica 1.1310-1325). Then he plunges back into the water.

Ovid, writing in Latin centuries later, gives the fullest account of his love. In Metamorphoses 13, Glaucus describes himself as a fisherman who ate a herb and then plunged into the sea. He loves Scylla and tries to win her with words, but she flees at the sight of him (Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.898-968). Ovid is the source for Scylla's earlier life as a nymph, and Homer's Odyssey does not tell it.

In Book 14 Glaucus goes to Circe and asks her, as a goddess, to pity a god and to use an incantation on his behalf. She answers that he would do better to court someone willing, and says she herself wishes only to be his. Glaucus refuses her. Circe still loves him, and her anger falls on the woman he prefers. She infects the pool where Scylla bathes with juices of a root and monster-breeding drugs (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.1-74).

Several other figures carry the name. In the Iliad, Sisyphus fathers a Glaucus, and that Glaucus fathers Bellerophon (Iliad 6.152-155). Apollodorus gives the same line and says Glaucus's wife was Eurymede (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.3). The sources checked here do not say that this Glaucus became a sea god. The Iliad also has Glaucus son of Hippolochus, a Lycian leader on the Trojan side and a grandson of Bellerophon.

This Lycian Glaucus meets Diomedes on the field in Book 6. The two find that their families are guest-friends, and they exchange armor. Homer says Zeus took away the wits of Glaucus, who gave gold armor for bronze (Iliad 6.232-236). Apollodorus's Epitome says that Ajax killed Glaucus in the fight over the body of Achilles (Epitome 5.4). The passage does not say which Glaucus it means.

A third Glaucus is a son of Minos. Apollodorus says that as a child he chased a mouse, fell into a jar of honey and drowned. Minos then searched for him, and the seer Polyidus found the child (Library 3.3.1). This Glaucus has no link in the sources checked here to the sea god.