Yet another reason to avoid fish

You may remember that I was clued in to the fact that I needed to observe the Orphic prohibition on seafood after an evening spent puking my guts out and how shortly afterwards I discovered a possible aition for this in the custom of fish honoring the dead at Anthesteria.

Well, I may have just discovered another one – one that’s actually a story about Ariadne I’d never read before!

So, after a pretty intense ritual and marathon divination session I was decompressing by farting around on Wikipedia while obsessively listening to this song on repeat:

Saw something odd about eels, and to verify it I consulted Athenaios’ Deipnosophistai, as one does. Well, once I had confirmed the anecdote I kept reading and found this:

Now the sea-god Glaukos, as Theolytos of Methymna says in his Epic of Bacchus, fell in love with Ariadne when she was carried away by Dionysos on the island of Dia; overpowered by Dionysos, he was bound hand and foot in the withes of a grape vine, but released when he entreated him in these words: “A city, then, there is by the side of the sea, Anthedon, over against Euboea, hard by the currents of Euripus. There is my birthplace, and the father who gat me was Copeus.” The epic poet Euanthes, on the other hand, in his Hymn to Glaukos, says that he was a son of Poseidon and the nymph Naïs, and that, falling in love with Ariadne, he lay with her in the island of Dia when she had been deserted by Theseus. Aristotle, in The Constitution of Delos, says that Glaukos settled in Delos in company with the Nereids, and gives prophecies to those who desire them. Alexander Aetolus also gives an account of him in the poem entitled The Fisherman. He says that Glaukos was engulfed in the sea “after he had eaten an herb which the untilled earth bears in springtime for shining Helios in the Isles of the Blest. And Helios tenders that herb unfailing, as a soul-satisfying supper to his steeds, that they may accomplish their course unwearied, and no distress may overtake any in their mid-journey.” Aeschrion of Samos, in one of his iambic poems, says that the herb, if eaten, made one immortal: “Thou hast found even the food of the gods, dog’s-tooth grass which Kronos sowed.” (294c)

Fascinating – and not just because of the chthonic drugs!

I can’t help but wonder if this is the incident alluded to by Homer:

Ariadne, that daughter of subtle Minos whom Theseus bore off from Crete towards the hill of sacred Athens; yet he had no joy of her, since, before that could be, she was slain by Artemis in the isle of Dia because of the witness of Dionysos. (Odyssey 11. 320 ff)

I’d always assumed it was because Dionysos let slip that something had happened between Ariadne and Asterios in the Labyrinth – but what if it was bragging about beating the slime out of Glaukos for raping his bride-to-be that resulted in Artemis slaying her for having her chastity violated?

Glaukos is really gross, too.

A fragment uncovered at Oxyrhynchos from the lost play Glaukos Pontios by Aischylos describes an encounter with him thusly:

Herdsman: And I still believe the certain witness of my own eyes. I was not blear-eyed or peering vainly to no purpose when I saw this fearful thing, this awful happening. You know, I am a countryman and of these parts; and I am always about the land here opposite Chalcis, and am used to accompany the grazing cattle from the byre to Messapion’s leafless lofty crag. And it was from here that my eye lit upon the miracle. When I had come to the bend of Euboia, about the headland of Zeus Krenaios, right by unhappy Lichas’ tomb. (Fr. 273)

While Plato fills us in on his horrid, Lovecraftian appearance:

The sea-god Glaukos whose first form can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves to him, accretions of shells and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature. (Republic 611d)

He was also linked to Orpheus in legend, though thankfully not in such a shokushu capacity:

The Argonauts had already reached the middle of the Pontic Sea when they ran into a storm which put them in the greatest peril. But when Orpheus, as on the former occasion, offered up prayers to the deities of Samothrake, the winds ceased and there appeared near the ship Glaukos the Sea-God, as he is called. The god accompanied the ship in its voyage without ceasing for two days and nights and foretold to Herakles his Labours and immortality, and to the Tyndaridai that they should be called Dioskoroi and receive at the hands of all mankind honour like that offered to the gods. And, in general, he addressed all the Argonauts by name and told them that because of the prayers of Orpheus he had appeared in accordance with a Providence of the gods and was showing forth to them what was destined to take place; and he counseled them, accordingly, that so soon as they touched their lands they should pray their vows to the gods through the intervention of whom they had twice already been saved. After this, the account continues, Glaukos sank back beneath the deep. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 4.48.6)

Despite that, animosity remained between Dionysos and Glaukos. When Poseidon led the sea-gods in battle against the Bacchic army, it was Glaukos, according to Nonnos, who drove the horses of Poseidon, goading them on with a watery whip (Dionysiaka 43.210).

According to Hedylos of Samos, Glaukos became a monster when he was overcome by madness after raping the boy Melikertes and threw himself into the sea.

Moral of the story: stay away from grayfish, as they are crazy and rapey.