Leucothea

Leukothea (Greek Λευκοθέα, "white goddess " ) was in Greek mythology the recorded among the ocean gods Ino, according to another version, the deified Halia.

Myth

Ino and her husband Athamas were the foster parents of Dionysus, son of Zeus and Semele. The jealous Hera, wife of Zeus, struck Athamas with madness, so he killed his eldest son Learchus. In pseudo - Apollodorus also Ino goes mad and cooks her younger son Melikertes in a boiler, with whom she then jumps off a cliff into the sea. Hyginus Mythographus reported that Ino had a stop on Phrixus and Helle, the children of Athamas ' first marriage, planned. Athamas, mad with rage, did it tried to kill Ino and Melikertes, but Dionysus rescued his nurse through a fog. Later, Ino had plunged into the sea with Melikertes. In all variants, Ino and Melikertes be included under the sea gods. In Ovid it is Venus - Aphrodite ( the mother of Harmonia and therefore grandmother of Ino ), asking Poseidon to save them and to turn them into gods.

Pausanias describes the Molurischen rocks at Megara as the cliff, jumped into the sea from the Ino, and the point at which they entered as Leukothea the country again, located on the coast of Messenia below the Mathia Mountains. At another point, Pausanias reports the Megarian legend, the corpse of Ino was washed ashore at Megara and been buried by Kleso and Tauropolis, the daughters Klesons.

She and her son Melikertes, worshiped as a god of the ports under the name Palaemon, were considered benevolent deities of the stormy sea, which distressed and shipwrecked granted assistance. An example of this includes the Odyssey, where the shipwrecked Odysseus of Leukothea receives the advice to leave his raft and rescue by swimming to the shore of the land of the Phaeacians. She lends him her veil purpose, which is to protect him from the dangers of the sea.

Among the Romans the Leukothea corresponded to the Mater Matuta.

Reception

In a way beyond the Greek sea deity also looking form the " White Goddess " in 1948, published the same work of the English poet Robert Graves is treated. Here, the " White Goddess " a universal deity and the mother deity par excellence. The work was mainly in the 1960s and 70s considerable influence on the New Age movement and Neopagan religions. However, the deity Ino / Leukothea and the associated cycle of legends appear in Graves ' work more on the edge.

Swell

• Euripides Medea 1284ff.
• Ovid 's Metamorphoses 4, 481ff