Ino and Melicertes - Versailles, France - Epic Beings and Creatures on Waymarking.com

This 1691 marble sculpture depicts Ino and her son Melicertes on a ledge...apparently just before their fateful leap into the sea where they become deities. Ino is wearing a flowing gown and has her arms outstretched in obvious alarm. Melicertes would appear to be a teenager who is seen standing awkwardly before Ino...seeming to question their fate.
Wikipedia (visit link) further informs us about the Greek mythological characters:

"Ino, pursued by her husband, who had been driven mad by Hera because Ino had brought up the infant Dionysus, threw herself and Melicertes into the sea from a high rock between Megara and Corinth, Both were changed into marine deities: Ino as Leucothea, noted by Homer,[1] Melicertes as Palaemon. The body of the latter was carried by a dolphin to the Isthmus of Corinth and deposited under a pine tree. Here it was found by his uncle Sisyphus, who had it removed to Corinth, and by command of the Nereids instituted the Isthmian Games and sacrifices in his honour.

Palaemon appears for the first time in Euripides Iphigeneia in Tauris, where he is already the "guardian of ships".[2] The paramount identification in the Latin poets of the Augustan age is with Portunus, the Roman god of safe harbours, memorably in Virgil's Georgics.[3] Ovid twice told the story of Ino's sea-plunge with Melicertes in her arms.[4]

Ovid's treatment in Fasti identifies for the first time as the location the Isthmus without literally naming it:

A land there is, shrunk within narrow bounds, which repels twin seas, and single in itself, is lashed by two-fold waters.

In later Latin poets there are numerous identifications of Palaemon with the sanctuary at the Isthmus, where no archaeological evidence was found for a pre-Augustan cult. In the late 2nd century CE, within the sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia, Pausanias saw a temple of Palaemon, with images in it of Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon himself. There is also what is called his Holy of Holies, and an underground descent to it, where they say that Palaemon is concealed. Whosoever, whether Corinthian or stranger, swears falsely here, can by no means escape from his oath. There is also an ancient sanctuary called the altar of the Cyclopes, and they sacrifice to the Cyclopes upon it.[5]
In company with Leucothea, Melicertes/Palaemon was widely invoked for protection from dangers at sea."

Time Period: Ancient Approximate Date of Epic Period: c. 800 BC Epic Type: Mythical Exhibit Type: Figure, Statue, 3D Art

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