Ino

Ino was a Theban princess, the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the second wife of King Athamas of Boeotia. She is remembered for the plot against Phrixus and Helle, for rearing the infant Dionysus, and for leaping into the sea with her son Melicertes, after which she became the sea goddess Leucothea. Hesiod names her among the daughters of Cadmus and Harmonia (Theogony 975–976).

Family

Ino's sisters were Semele, the mother of Dionysus, Agave and Autonoe (Hesiod, Theogony 975–978). By Athamas she had two sons, Learchus and Melicertes (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.1). Athamas already had a son, Phrixus, and a daughter, Helle, by his first wife, the cloud-goddess Nephele.

The Plot Against Phrixus and Helle

Apollodorus says that Ino plotted against the children of Nephele. She persuaded the women of the land to parch the seed wheat, and the men did not know of it. The sown fields yielded nothing, so Athamas sent to Delphi to ask how the famine might be ended. Ino bribed the messengers to report that the barrenness would cease if Phrixus were sacrificed to Zeus. Athamas was forced by the people to bring Phrixus to the altar, but Nephele snatched up her son and daughter and gave them a ram with a golden fleece, a gift from Hermes. The ram carried them through the sky, and over the sea between Sigeum and the Chersonese Helle slipped off and drowned; the sea was called the Hellespont after her. Phrixus came to Colchis, where King Aeetes received him and gave him his daughter Chalciope. Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the fleece to Aeetes, who nailed it to an oak in a grove of Ares (Library 1.9.1). That fleece was the object of the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts.

Ino and Dionysus

After Semele died, Zeus gave the infant Dionysus to Hermes, who brought him to Ino and Athamas to be reared as a girl. Hera was angry and drove the couple mad (Library 3.4.3).

Madness and Death

In Apollodorus' account Athamas, in his madness, hunted his elder son Learchus like a deer and killed him, and Ino threw herself and Melicertes into the sea (Library 1.9.2, 3.4.3). Pausanias tells of the same leap from the Molurian Rock on the road through Megara: Learchus, the elder, had been killed by his father, and Ino jumped with the younger boy. He also records a different reason for Athamas' rage: that when he learned the famine and the supposed death of Phrixus were Ino's doing, he vented his anger on her and her children (Description of Greece 1.44.7). Ovid has Juno send the Fury Tisiphone against Athamas and Ino, and Neptune grant Ino's prayer that she and her son become sea gods (Metamorphoses 4.416–542).

Pausanias says that a dolphin carried the boy to the Isthmus of Corinth, where he was honoured under the name Palaemon and the Isthmian games were held for him (Description of Greece 1.44.8). Apollodorus ascribes the founding of those games to Sisyphus (Library 3.4.3).

Leucothea

Homer knows Ino as Leucothea, “who was once a mortal with human speech, but now in the sea has a share of honour from the gods.” When Poseidon wrecks the raft of Odysseus, she rises from the waves, lends him her veil, and tells him to swim to the land of the Phaeacians (Odyssey 5.333–353).

Pausanias records her cult in Laconia: at Brasiae the people said that Ino came there on her wanderings and became the nurse of Dionysus, and they showed the cave where she nursed him (3.24.4); and on the road to Thalamae there was a sanctuary of Ino with an oracle consulted in dreams (3.26.1).

Athamas and Themisto

After the death of his sons Athamas was banished from Boeotia. An oracle told him to settle where wild beasts entertained him, and he found wolves devouring sheep, who fled at the sight of him; he named the land Athamantia and married Themisto, who bore him Leucon, Erythrius, Schoeneus and Ptous (Library 1.9.2). A further story, told by Hyginus, has Themisto plot to kill Ino's sons by having them dressed in black while her own wore white; Ino reversed the clothes, and Themisto killed her own children (Fabulae 4).

Ino Sources

Homer, Odyssey 5.333–353; Hesiod, Theogony 975–978; Apollodorus, Library 1.9.1–2, 3.4.2–3; Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.44.7–8, 3.24.4, 3.26.1; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.416–542; Hyginus, Fabulae 4.

See Also: Cadmus, Harmonia, Athamas, Learches, Melicertes, Semele, Dionysus, Nephele, Phrixus, Helle, Aeetes, Jason, Argonauts, Hera, Themisto