Who was Ino in Greek Mythology

Ino was the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. Her extended family and the Theban circle to which she belongs are involved in stories surrounding Dionysus and in stories of transformations and metastases.

Her sister Semele was the mother of Dionysus, but Ino, along with her other two sisters, Autonoe and Agave, deny the divine parentage of their nephew. Agave in a state of rage dismembers Penthea’s son, the son of Autonoe Actaeon is dismembered by his dogs and transformed into a deer , Ino and her son Melikertis fall into the sea and the gods make them immortal and gods.

Her brother Polydoros is the progenitor of the Lavdakids, whose history involves the seer Teiresias who was transformed from man to woman and from woman to man. The second brother, Illyrios, is excluded from the story of the family feuds, apparently because he was born later and not in Thebes.

Ino was the second wife of the Boeotian king Athamas, who reigned in the region of Koroni or in Thebes itself. From this marriage two sons were born, Learchos and Melikertis, who grew up with Phrixos and Helli, children Athamandas had with his first wife, Nefeli. Out of jealousy for the children of Nefeli, Ino thought of a trick that would lead to their death:

Ino having evil in her mind for the children of Nepheli, she persuaded the women to roast the wheat seed. They, taking him secretly from the men, did so. And the earth, which received in her bowels roasted seeds, yielded no fruit. For this reason Athamandas sent envoys to Delphi and asked to know how they could be freed from unfruitfulness.

But Ino persuaded the envoys to say that the god foresaw that they would be freed from fruitlessness if they sacrificed Phrixus to Zeus. As soon as Athamandas heard this, under the pressure of the peasants as well, he led Phrixos to the altar. But Nepheli seized him together with her daughter and gave them an L, which she had taken from Hermes; mounted on the ram they flew into the sky over land and sea.

Another version, complementary, to this story, which combines Ino’s hatred of Nephele’s children and her death, says that the messenger who was bribed by Ino took pity on Phrixus and revealed the plot to Athamas. And he ordered that Ino and their little son Melikertis be sacrificed in place of Phrixus. But Dionysus took pity on her, because Ino had been his nurse (Fig. 1038, 1039), he wrapped her in a cloud and made her invisible; so Ino escaped with her son. The god then enraged Athamas who killed his second son, Learchus, by throwing him into a cauldron of boiling water. Out of her sadness, Ino committed suicide together with Melikertis.

Apollodorus attributes the rage of Athamas to Hera, who was furious with the royal couple because they had brought up Dionysus, the child of her husband’s mistress – she delivered him to them the Hermes entrusted to him by Zeus. So Athamandas chased Learchus like a deer and killed his child and then Ino committed suicide as she too was carried away by the wrath of the goddess, as the dance laments at the time of the murder of Medea’s children in Euripides’ tragedy of the same name.

It was also said that Ino threw Melikertis into a cauldron of boiling water, while Athamandas was killing the deer-Learchus with a spear. Or that Athamandas threw the child into the cauldron and she pulled it out before killing herself with it. The sea deities took pity on her and transformed her into Neris and the child into the little god Palaemon.
Tradition says that Ino fell from one of the rocks called Molourida. Her son was brought ashore by a dolphin, whereupon he was renamed Palaimon and she Lefkothea.

Hesychius also mentions a Lemnian festival, the Inynia (Ino), which is part of the Kaverian circle, celebrations in honor of the local Kaveri, metallurgical gods with orgiastic worship. A holiday was also established in honor of Melikertis Palaemon, her son, by Sisyphus, the king of Corinth and his uncle. He, when the dolphin brought his body dead Melicertis on the Corinthian shores, he buried him on the Isthmus of Corinth; and when once a pestilence fell upon the city, the god asked that Melicertes Palaemon be honored with games, so that they might be freed from the afflictions. Thus the Isthmian Games were established.

Ino Leukothea

As the deity of the sea, Ino Leucothea, the White goddess, the goddess of the foam of the waves, saves Odysseus from the storm that Zeus stirred up, when the hero was already close to the land of the Phaeacians. He advised him to take off the clothes that Calypso had given him and which were weighing him down, to spread out like “the immortal handkerchief”, the kridemnon], and to abandon his ship.

And when he reaches the land of the Phaeacians by swimming, he should untie the sail and leave it in the waves without him seeing it. Her son, the little Palaimonas, also became the protector of sailors and their guide in times of storm.

The double nature of the goddess with the two names

Ino/Leucothea with both names seems to have a double identity, marine and chthonian. If the first is obvious, the second is lurking in the cauldron with the dead child. The cauldron in various myths is the tool of a resurrection and renewal ceremony, like that of Aeson or a ram from Medea, or how the dismembered Pelops came back to life – a clean cauldron called Clotho.

Even Thetis’ attempt to make Achilles immortal is done with fire. Thus, Ino becomes a deity of vegetation and hairdresser, associated with rituals of renewal. After all, falling into the sea and changing one’s name reveal a fertilizing ceremony, renewing reproductive powers, or a cleansing ceremony.

During festivals in honor of Inos, her statue was thrown into the sea to be cleansed and emerged as Lefkothea. As for the third essence, the heavenly, this arises from the name Leukothea which connects it with light, the sun and Jupiter. In the scene of the rescue of Odysseus, he appears as a bird and as if projected into the inaccessible space of the sky a complex display system that refers to the field of navigation.

Françoise Frondisi-Dicrou points out that since the memory of a solar cult has been recognized behind many myths, the Leucothea bird can symbolize the course of the sun that Odysseus follows to orientate himself. Anyway, the bird was used in ancient times as a means of navigation