Glaucus

Glaucus (pronounce gloh-kus)

(1) Bluish-green, grayish-blue, sea-colored (ie of certain seas) or a gleaming pale blue.

(2) Any member of the genus Glaucus of nudibranchiate mollusks, found in the warmer latitudes, swimming in the open sea, strikingly colored with blue and silvery white.  They’re known also as sea swallow, blue angel, blue glaucus, blue dragon, blue sea slug, blue ocean slug).  If offered the choice, the organisms presumably would prefer to be called swallows, angels or dragons rather than slugs.

(3) A desert lime (Citrus glauca), a thorny shrub species endemic to semi-arid regions of Australia.

From the Ancient Greek γλαυκός (glaukós) (the γλαῦκος (glaûkos) was an edible grey fish although the species is uncertain (perhaps the derbio)) and was taken up by the Medieval Latin as glaucus (bright, sparkling, gleaming” and “bluish-green).  There may be an Indo-European root but no link has ever been found and despite the similarity, other words used to denote gleaming or shimmering light and colors (glow, gleam etc), there’s no known etymological link and it may have been a substratum word from Pre-Greek.  The eighth century BC poet Homer used the Greek glaukos to describe the sea as “gleaming, silvery”, apparently without any suggestion of a specific color but later writers adopted it with a sense of “greenish” (of olive leaves) and “blue; gray” (of eyes).  In English, the adjective glaucous dates from the 1670s and was used to refer to shades of bluish-green or gray; it’s a popular form in botany and ornithology, describing surfaces with a powdery or waxy coating that gives a pale blue-gray appearance.  In fashion, the vagueness of glaucus (especially the adjective glaucous) makes it handy because it can be used to describe eyes or fabrics neither quite blue nor green yet really not suited to being called turquoise, teal, aqua etc.  Glaucus is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is glaucuses.

Translators seem to believe Homer's glauk-opis Athene (Athena Glaukopis) meant “bright-eyed” rather than “gray-eyed” goddess; it was an epithet emphasizing her intelligence and wisdom, the construct being glau(kos) (gleaming, silvery; bluish-green; grey) + opsis (eye; face).  The word γλαύξ (glaux) (little owl) may have been related and linked to the bird’s distinctive, penetrating stare but it may also be from a pre-Greek source.  Owls do however sometimes appear with the goddess in Greek art and, like her, became a symbol of wisdom and intelligence.  The other epithets applied to Athena included Ophthalmitis and Oxyderkous, both references to her sharp, penetrating gaze.  As a descriptor of color, glaucus was applied widely including to eyes, the sea, the sky or fabrics and was used of shining surfaces.  The descendants include the Catalan glauc, the English glaucous, the French glauque, the Romanian glauc, the Italian glauco, the Portuguese glauco, the Romanian glauc and the Spanish glauco.  The Middle English glauk (bluish-green, gray) was in use as late as the early fifteenth century.

Renaissance-era engraving of Athena, the Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, and craft, depicted in Corinthian helmet with spear and clothed in a long πέπλος (péplos); her aegis (shield or breastplate), bearing the Gorgon's head, rests nearby.  Athena’s sacred bird, the Athene noctua (little owl) is perched atop a pile of books, symbolizing knowledge & wisdom while the creature at her feet is the chthonic serpent Erichthonius which she raised, used often to stand for the triumph of reason over chaos, thus appearing also as the sacred serpent which protected the Acropolis.  The Greek Inscription on the banner reads: ΜΟΧΘΕΙΝ ΑΝΑΓΚΗ ΤΟΥΣ ΘΕΛΟΝΤΑΣ ΕΥ ΠΡΑΤΤΕΙΝ (Those who wish to do well must undergo toil) a classical aphorism often suggested as being a paraphrasing lines from Pindar or Isocrates, extolling effort and virtue.

In the myths of Antiquity there were many tales of Glaucus and in that the character was not unusual, the figures in the stories sometimes differing in details like parentage, where they lived, the lives they led and even whether they were gods or mortals; sometimes the lives depicted bore little similarity to those in other tales.  The myths in ancient Greece were not a fixed canon in the modern Western literary tradition; they were for centuries passed down orally for centuries before being written and in different regions a poet or dramatist was likely to tell it differently.   That was not just artistic licence because the stories could be a product people would pay to hear and content providers needed new product.  Additionally, as is a well-documented phenomenon when information is passed on orally, over generations, the “Chinese whispers problem” occurs and things, organically, can change.

Lindsay Lohan’s in glaucous (in the Medieval Latin sense of gleaming as well as the color) John Galliano satin gown, worn with Santoni stilettos, Irish Wish (Netflix, 2024) premiere, Paris Theater, New York City, March, 2024.

Nor was there the modern conception of IP (intellectual property) or copyright in the characters, the myths “belonging” literally to all as a shared public cultural heritage.  Were a poet (Ovid, Homer, Hesiod etc) to “re-imagine” an old myth or use well known characters to populate a new plot, that wasn’t plagiarization but simply a creative act in interpretation or reshaping.  There were social and political determinisms in all this: We now refer casually to “Ancient Greece” but it was not a unitary state (a la modern Greece) but an aggregation of city-states with their own distinct cults, local legends and literary traditions.  So, in one region Glaucus might have been depicted as a sea-god while somewhere to the south he was a warrior; a tragedian might make Glaucus tragic, a philosopher might use him as an allegorical device and a poet might map him onto a formulaic tale of jealousy, transformation and redemption.  The best comparison is probably the fictional characters which have entered public domain (as Mickey Mouse recently achieved) and thus become available for anyone to make of what they will.  To be generous, one might suggest what the AI (artificial intelligence) companies now wish to be made lawful (vacuuming up digitized copyright material to train their LLMs (large language models) for commercial gain while not having to pay the original creators or rights holders) is a return to the literary practices of antiquity.

Lindsay Lohan’s eyes naturally (left) are in the glaucus range but with modern contact lens (right), much is possible.

So it wasn’t so much that writers felt free to adapt myths to suit their purposes but rather it would never have occurred to them there was anything strange in doing exactly that.  Significantly, any author was at any time free to create a wholly new cast for their story but just as movie producers know a film with “bankable” stars has a greater chance of success than one with talented unknowns, the temptation must have been to avoid risking market resistance and “stick to the classics”.  Additionally, what’s never been entirely certain is the extent to which the poets who wrote down what they heard were inclined to “improve” things.  The myths were in a sense entertainment but they were often also morality tales, psychological studies or statements of political ideology, a medium for exploring fate, identity, love, betrayal, divine justice and other vicissitudes of life.  The very modern notion of “authorship” would have been unfamiliar in Antiquity, a ποιητής (author; poet) being someone who “shaped” rather than “owned” them and Homer (who may not have been a single individual) was revered not because he “made up” the Trojan War, but because masterfully he recounted it, just as now historians who write vivid histories are valued. 

Some of the many lives of Glaucus (Γλαύκος)

(1) He was the son of Antenor who helped Paris abduct Helen and to punish him, his father drove him out.  He fought against the Greeks, and was said sometimes to have been slain by Agamemnon but the more common version is he was saved by Odysseus and Menelaus; as the son of Antenor, who was bound to them by ties of friendship.

(2) He was the son of Hippolochus and grandson of Bellerophon and with his cousin Sarpedon, he commanded the Lycian contingent at Troy.  In the fighting around the city, he found himself face to face with Diomedes but both recalled their families were bound by ties of friendship so the two exchanged weapons, Diomedes of bronze and Glaucus of gold.  Later, when Sarpedon was wounded, he went to assist him, but was stopped by Teucer, wounded and forced to retire from the fray.  Apollo cured Glaucus in time to recover Sarpedon's body, though he was unable to stop the Greeks stripping the corpse of its arms.  Glaucus was killed during the fight for the body of Patroclus by Ajax and on Apollo's order his body was carried back to Lycia by the winds.

(3) He was the son of Sisyphus and succeeded his father to the throne of Ephyra, which later became Corinth.  Glaucus took part in the funeral games of Pelias but was beaten in the four-horse chariot race by Iolaus; after this his mares ate him alive after being maddened either by the water of a magic well, or as a result of Aphrodite's anger, for in order to make his mares run faster Glaucus refused to let them breed, and so offended the goddess.  In another legend, this Glaucus drank from a fountain which conferred immortality. No one would believe that he had become immortal, however, so he threw himself into the sea, where he became a sea-god and every sailor who cast a gaze upon him was assured an early death.

(4) He was a sea-deity.  Glaucus was a fisherman standing on the shore when he noticed if he laid his catch upon a certain herb-covered meadow, the fish miraculously were restored to life and jumped back into the sea. Curious, he tasted the herb himself and was seized by an irresistible urge to dive into the waters where the sea goddesses cleansed him of his remaining traces of mortality.  With that, he assumed a new form, his shoulders grew broader and his legs became a fish’s tail, his cheeks developed a thick beard (tinted green like the patina of bronze) and he became a part of the oceanic pantheon.  He also received the gift of prophecy to become a protector of sailors, often giving oracles and wisdom drawn from the sea.

Glaucus et Scylla (1726), oil on canvas by Jacques Dumont le Romain (1704-1781), (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Troyes). 

(5) Virgil made him the father of the Cumaean Sibyl and he appeared to Menelaus when the latter was returning from Troy; in some traditions he is said to have built the Argo and to have accompanied the ship on its voyage.  Glaucus courted Scylla unsuccessfully, and also tried to win the favours of Ariadne when Theseus abandoned her on Naxos. In that quest he failed but Dionysus included him in his train when the god took her away and made her his wife.

(6) He was the son of Minos and Pasiphae and while still a child he was chasing a mouse when he fell into a jar of honey and drowned.  When Minos finally found his son's corpse, the Curetés told him the child could be restored to life by the man who could best describe the colour of a certain cow among his herds which changed its colour three times a day.  It first became white, then red and finally became black.  Minos asked all the cleverest men in Crete to describe the colour of the cow and it was Polyidus who answered that the cow was mulberry-coloured, for the fruit is first white, turns red, and finally goes black when ripe. Minos felt that Polyidus had solved the problem and told him to bring Glaucus back to life, shutting him up with Glaucus' body.  Polyidus was at his wits' end, until he saw a snake make its way into the room and go over towards the body. He killed the serpent but soon a second came in and, seeing the first lying dead, went out before returning carrying in its mouth a herb with which it touched its companion.  Immediately, the snake was restored to life so Polyidus rubbed this herb on Glaucus, who revived at once.  Minos, however, was still not satisfied.  Before allowing Polyidus to return to his fatherland he demanded that the soothsayer should teach Glaucus his art.  This Polyidus did, but when he was finally allowed to go, he spat into his pupil's mouth, and Glaucus immediately lost all the knowledge he had just acquired.  In other versions of the legend, it was Asclepius, not Polyidus, who brought Glaucus back to life.