Glaucus

A grandson of Aeolus, son of Sisyphus and Merope, and father of Bellerophon.1 He lived at Potniae, despised the power of Aphrodite, and did not allow his mares to breed, that they might be the stronger for the horse race. According to others, he fed them with human flesh, for the purpose of making them spirited and warlike. This excited the anger of Aphrodite or the gods in general, who punished him in this way: — when Acastus celebrated the funeral games of his father, Pelias, at Iolcus, Glaucus took part in them with a chariot and four horses; but the animals were frightened and upset the chariot.2 According to others, they tore Glaucus to pieces, having drunk from the water of a sacred well in Boeotia, in consequence of which they were seized with madness; others, again, describe this madness as the consequence of their having eaten a herb called hippomanes.

It was believed on the Corinthian isthmus that it was haunted by the shade of Glaucus, who frightened the horses during the race, and was therefore called ταράξιππος (taraxippos).3 Glaucus of Potniae (Γλαῦκος Ποτνιεύς) was the title of one of Aeschylus' lost tragedies.4

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References

Notes

  1. Homer. Iliad vi, 154; Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 9.3; Pausanias. Description of Greece ii, 4.2.
  2. Pausanias. Description of Greece iii, 18.9; v, 17.4; Pseudo-Apollodorus. The Library i, 9.28; Nonnus. Dionysiaca xii, 143.
  3. Pausanias. Description of Greece vi 20.9.
  4. 4, Welcker. Die Aeschylische Trilogie, n 561; Nachtrag, p. 175; Die Griechischen Tragödien. Vol. i, pp. 30, 52.

Sources

  • Etymologicum Magnum p. 685. 42.
  • Aelian. History of Animals xv, 25.
  • Eustathius on Homer, p. 269.
  • Hyginus. Fabulae, 250, 273.
  • Pausanias. Description of Greece ix, 8.1.
  • Scholiast on Euripides' Orestes, 318; on Phoenician Women, 1159.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Strabo. Geography, p. 409.
  • Virgil. Georgics iii, 267.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.