#melicertes

May 10, 2026:

Pistachio Tertiary, Vigil, Piebald.

Son of Athamas and Ino

(Brother of Learkos and step-brother of Phrixos and Helle.)

Little baby grew up and is forever a young deity (poor fate)

Anyways, to the juicy stuff, his necklaces are of gold, and shark teeth (we have sharks) his bracelets are of mother of pearl and gold.

Now, he is in a sea medow of Posidonia oceanica, the white blobs are epiphytes and Electra posidoniae, the fishes are juveniles of Chromis chromis, Sargus sargo and Serranus scriba

The invertebrates are Sabellidae, Palaemon elegans and the reason of this drawing, Pinna nobilis.

Pinna nobilis also know as fan mussel in english and Πίννα in greek is a critically endangered species essential for Posidonia oceanica seameadowns and most marine Mediterranean ecosystems as it is an active filtrator and allows for the cleanliness and transparency of the waters not only just for humans but for the enviorment as a whole.

In 2016 a virus outbreak has been killing all their natural populations in mass ever since, so, even if we are talking myths and the likes, these species were important for the ancients as they are for us now and I would love you guys to see them, even if they are in a drawing.

I hope this sparks your curiosity about them and the huge effort many organizations and individuals are doing for this special organism.

Melicertes was a Boeotian prince as the son of King Athamas and Ino, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes.

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, and both were changed into marine deities: Ino as Leucothea, noted by Homer, Melicertes as Palaemon.

Illustration contained in one of the many manuscripts of "Ovide Moralise", a French adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses erroneously attributed to Chrétien Legouais (for now it remains anonymous). The book was illuminated around the year 1325.

I LOVE THE PAINTING, but it kills me that they look like stick figures ajjaja imo it looks like Helle is deliberately throwing herself into the sea. I'm fascinated by the background, it's stunning with the gold and I love the golden ram. It also kills me that he's right at the water's edge LOL.

Ino's drawing looks like that is rotated 90º it's very angular. Why hasn't it fallen over yet? And Melicertes looks like a silkworm, but he's actually really cute LMAO. The medieval crowns are so sweet I love them they are all the same in all the illuminations😂.

WHY ARE THE BACKGROUNDS SO BEAUTIFULLY DRAWN?

MENTION THAT THE SEA IS WINE-DARK SEA (a dry one tho🤣)

I think I'm finally breaking out of my quasi art-block.

It’s hard to explain murder- Dean Cornwell

gives me the vibe of Athamas and Ino when they apparently “have to” sacrifice Phrixius (and depending on the telling of the story, sometimes Helle too)

What kind of coolness measurement device do you have at home, Daisy? I think it must be a very powerful one that doesn't break every time you look for or find art😱😍. BRUH I LOOOOVEEEEEEEEEE IT. I love the vibe of guilt that the woman has. She is totally guilty of what is happening in this scene, but she actually hides it with regret for whatever she said to her ¿husband?.

This made me wonder if at some point in her life Ino truly regretted what she did. I don't think so, but in Nonnus Dionysia, when Ino is about to throw herself into the sea, she mentions that, in part, her misery is caused by the Erinyes (avenging goddesses) of Nephele:

Dionisyaca, 10. 85-119 (translated by W. H. D. Rouse):

“A fine reward you have given me, Flashthunderbolt [Zeus], for the care of Bacchos [Dionysus]! See this boy [Ino's son Melicertes], Lyaios’ [Dionysus] agemate, half burnt to death! If it please you, strike down with your merciless bolt mother and son together, the little one I nursed in one bosom with your divine Dionysos! Child [to Melicertes], Necessity is a great god! – where will you flee? What mountain will receive you, now you have fled to the sea? What Cithairon will hide you in a dark hollow? What mortal man will pity you, when your father [Athamas] has no mercy? Either sword or water shall receive you: if needs must, better to perish in the sea than by the sword. I know where this disaster came from, rolling upon your mother: I know! It is Nephele sends the Erinyes after me, that I may die in this sea where maiden Helle fell. I have heard that Phrixos was carried through the air to the Colchian country, guiding aloft the Ram who took him off, and he still lives in a distant land. O that my son Melicertes too might escape to another country, and travel the high path of the goldfleece ram! O that Poseidon, the hospitable friend of Glaucos, might save you, pitying your Ino as once he pitied Phoibos! I fear that after the fate of unburied Learchos I may see you also dead, unburied, unwept, undone, panting under the bloody knife of your father. Make haste! escape from mad Athamas, and then you will not see the father who murdered his child, murder the mother. Receive me you too, O sea! I have done with earth. Receive Melicertes also with hospitable hand, O Nereus, as you received Perseus! Receive Ino, as once Danaë in her floating hutch! I have been justly punished for my impiety. As I made seedless the earth’s lifegiving furrow, so Cronion has made my family seedless. A kind of stepmother, I planned to mow down the bastard plants of Athamas, and Hera, the real stepmother of newly nurtured Dionysos, is angry with me.”

I want to talk first about the sentence in orange that I don't really understand. I don't understand it at all, but I've checked two translations, the first in Spanish and the second in French, and they both say the same thing. Could be that the English translator has made a mess of it (idk someone enlighten me pls).

GR: αἴθε δὲ καὶ μετὰ Φοῖβον ἐποικτείρων σέθεν Ἰνὼ ξεινοδόκος Γλαύκοιο Ποσειδάων σε σαώσῃ.

ESP: ¡Ah, si después de Febo, apiadándose de tu madre, también Posidón, el que acogió a Glauco, te salvara a ti!

FR: Plût aux dieux que Neptune, l'hôte bienveillant de Glaucus, eut pitié de la malheureuse Ino, déjà sauvée par Apollon!

These two translations makes sense if we consider that in the previous rhapsody, Ino, driven mad by Hera, enters Delphi and Apollo puts her to sleep (for four moons) because he takes pity on her. (YES, NONNUS HAS A LOT OF CONTENT ABOUT INO)

Let's continue with the text itself, the truth is that I do not know if she is regretting it, but she is very aware of all what she did. She clearly names the children of Nephele and clearly wishes for Melicertes to be taken away by a ram, just as happened to Phrixus in times of misfortune, and she wants him to continue living as Phrixus still lives in Colchis. She says she has been punished for her crimes, not only those of Phrixus and Helle, but also for the whole scheme she set up to make Athamas believe the lie (WHICH IS WHAT THE PAINTING REFERS TO) that Phrixus had to die in order to save Orchomenus from the famine that she herself had caused. Ino instigated the farmers to roast the seeds before sowing so that nothing would grow, which is why she says she has left the earth seedless. Ino is aware of everything, even that Hera is angry with her, so either she is in a moment of madness and knows what is happening to her and cannot help it, or Hera is putting words in her mouth, although I lean towards the first option.

So she is aware of her crimes and misfortunes and her situation and lamenting for it? YES. But remorseful? I don't see it. If you do, tell me, maybe I'm being insensitive.

I never thought Danae and Ino would be in the same context. Although I understand perfectly what Ino is saying and why she compares her situation to Danae's, I still find it curious to compare their situations from a spectator's POV. As she herself has said, Ino has a history of horrible things she has done, and in a way, from a cold and vengeful point of view, that could make her “deserve” this fate. Danae, on the other hand, did absolutely nothing and was thrown into the sea on her father's orders because he thought that the child (Perseus) she had had was fathered by a man she had been secretly seeing. After being thrown into the sea in a chest with Perseus, it is said that she was protected by Poseidon and/or the Nereids and then Dictys, a fisherman, found the chest and saved them both and took them to his home in Seriphos. I find this comparison curious if taken out of the context of being rescued from the sea because in that case they are not the same.

After this fragment comes Ino's apotheosis, and then Zeus introduces her to Semele, who is her sister, and Semele begins to tell that she is better than Ino and more things.

Returning to the artwork, I've looked into it, and the crime referred to in the title is abertien, so it's not at all the same as Ino, but the vibe is that something isn't right and that something big has happened.

The protagonists of my next project, "Cosmos and Chaos"