Leucothea

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For the genus of ctenophores, see Leucothea (ctenophore). For the ancient Cypriot city sometimes known as Leucothea, see Nicosia.
"Leukothea, Goddess of Sailors," a cigarette card issued by William S. Kimball & Co.

In Greek mythology, Leucothea (/ljuːˈkoʊθiə/; Ancient Greek: Λευκοθέα, romanized: Leukothéa, lit. 'white goddess'), sometimes also called Leucothoe (Ancient Greek: Λευκοθόη, romanized: Leukothóē), was a sea goddess. Myths surrounding Leucothea typically concern her original identity, either as Ino or Halia, and her transformation into a goddess.

Mythology

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Ino's transfiguration into Leucothea

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In more common versions of the story, the Boetian queen Ino, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was transformed into Leucothea.[1][2][3] Ino's sister, Semele, was the mother of Dionysus by Zeus. After Semele's death, Ino and her husband Athamas helped raise the young Dionysus.[4] This action invoked Hera's wrath and jealousy, and she struck Ino with insanity, causing her to boil her son Melicertes alive. When she finally came to her senses, she was horrified and leapt into the sea with the body of her dead son. Zeus took pity, and transformed Melicertes into Palaemon, the patron of the Isthmian Games, and Ino into Leucothea.[4]

In another version of the myth, Ino's husband Athamas was instead the one Hera struck with insanity. Athamas began to hunt his family, first killing their son Learchus, before setting out to find and kill Ino and Melicertes. To escape Athamas, Ino and Melicertes leapt into the sea, and were transformed.

As a goddess, Leucothea had a temple and oracle in Colchis, which was said to be founded by Phrixus.[5] She was also celebrated at the Roman festival of Matralia, as she was often conflated with the Roman goddess Mater Matuta.[6] During the festival, parents would nurse, care for, and pray for their nieces and nephews instead of their own children, emulating how Ino cared for her nephew, Dionysus.[7][8][9]

In the Odyssey, Homer makes Leucothea the transfiguration of Ino.[10] When Odysseus is stranded at sea on a broken ship, Leucothea suddenly appears and tells Odysseus to discard the garments that Calypso had given him, wind her veil[a] around himself, discard his raft, and begin to swim instead, claiming that it will bring him to land. While Odysseus doesn't believe the goddess at first,[11] he eventually does so, and after three days, washes up upon the shores of Scheria.[12]

Halia's transfiguration into Leucothea

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In the version of the myth from Rhodes, a nymph or minor goddess named Halia[b] was the one who became Leucothea. Before her transformation, Halia was a telechine as a daughter of the titans Thalassa and Pontus (or Uranus). Poseidon became enamored with Halia and together they had seven children: a daughter, Rhodos,[13] and six sons. One day, when Aphrodite was sailing past Rhodes and attempted to stop at the island, their sons prevented the goddess from doing so. In anger, Aphrodite caused them to go mad, and they raped their mother. In anguish, Halia threw herself into the sea and became Leucothea. When Poseidon learned of what had happened, the sons were imprisoned beneath the island.[14] The people of Rhodes traced their mythic descent from Rhodos and the sun god Helios.[15]

It is possible that Leucothea is the "Leucothoe" that Hyginus makes the mother of Thersanon by Helios, although he could be referring to another woman by the same name.[16]

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  • Leucothea is mentioned by John Milton in the Paradise Lost scene where archangel Michael descends to Adam and Eve to declare that they must no longer abide in Paradise (second edition, 1674, book XI, lines 133–135):

    Meanwhile,
    To re-salute the world with sacred light,
    Leucothea waked;…[17]

  • Leucothea is mentioned by Robert Graves in The White Goddess.
  • In Ezra Pound's Cantos, she is one of the goddess figures who comes to the poet's aid in Section: Rock-Drill (Cantos 85–95). She is introduced in Canto 91 as "Cadmus's daughter":

    As the sea-gull Κάδμου θυγάτηρ said to Odysseus
    KADMOU THUGATER
    "get rid of parap[h]ernalia"

  • She returns in Cantos 93 ("Κάδμου θυγάτηρ") and 95 ("Κάδμου θυγάτηρ/ bringing light per diafana/ λευκὁς Λευκόθοε/ white foam, a sea-gull… 'My bikini is worth yr/ raft'. Said Leucothae… Then Leucothea had pity,/'mortal once/ Who now is a sea-god…'"), and reappears at the beginning of Canto 96, the first of the Thrones section ("Κρήδεμνον…/ κρήδεμνον…/ and the wave concealed her,/ dark mass of great water.").
  • Leucothea appears twice in Dialoghi con Leucò (Dialogues with Leucò) by Cesare Pavese.
  • Leucothoé was the first work by the Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe published in 1756.
  • Leucothea becomes a metaphor, in Marcel Proust's In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, for the mist that covers a young man's gaze when looking on the beauty of young women: "…a cloud that had re-formed a few days later, once I had met them, muting the glow of their loveliness, often passing between them and my eyes, which saw them now dimmed, as through a gentle haze, reminiscent of Virgil's Leucothea."[18]
  • Leukothea is a poem by Keith Douglas.[19]

Namesake

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Notes

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  1. ^ "veil" is a translation of Ancient Greek: κρήδεμνον, romanized: krḗdemnon
  2. ^ Halia means "salty" or "of the sea"; perhaps a personification of the saltiness of the sea.

References

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  1. ^ Aristotle, Rhetoric, 2.23
  2. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.42.7
  3. ^ Pindar, Pythian 1, 11
  4. ^ a b Apollodorus, Library, 3.4
  5. ^ Strabo, Geography, 11.2
  6. ^ Plutarch, Camillus, 5.2
  7. ^ Plutarch, De Fraterno Amore, 21.
  8. ^ Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 17
  9. ^ "A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), MATRA´LIA". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2025-05-21.
  10. ^ Homer, Odyssey, 5.313
  11. ^ Homer, Odyssey, 5.365
  12. ^ Homer, Odyssey, 6.1
  13. ^ According to other traditions, Rhodos was the daughter not of Halia/Leucothea but rather Aphrodite (Pindar O.7.14) or Amphitrite (Apollodorus 1.4.5).
  14. ^ Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 5.55.4–7
  15. ^ Graves, Robert (1955). The Greek Myths.
  16. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 125; Smith, s.v. Leucothoe
  17. ^ John Milton, The English Poems (Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2004).
  18. ^ Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 526.
  19. ^ Keith Douglas, The Complete Poems with introduction by Ted Hughes (Oxford University Press, 2011).

General references

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Leucothea.
  • Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion.
  • Cooper, J.C., ed. (1997). Brewer's Book of Myth and Legend. Oxford: Helicon Publishing Ltd.
  • Kerenyi, Karl (1951). The Gods of the Greeks.
  • Russo, Sergio (2017). Quando il mare profuma di ambrosia. Leucotea e Palemone nel Mediterraneo.