Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/271

Rh some reference being made to this important victory in the third member of the trilogy, the Glaukos Potnieus. According to popular tradition Glaukos was a fisherman, who became a marine demigod by eating of the divine life-giving herb sown by Kronos: one version of the legend represents him to have been one of the Argonauts, who, having fallen from his galley, suffered this transformation. The so-called grotto of Glaukos was situated near the little town of Authedon in Bœotia: this marine deity, accompanied by strange monsters of the sea, was accustomed, once a year, to visit the surrounding coasts and islands, and there to prophesy impending calamity. His approach was anticipated by the fishermen, by whom he was held in peculiar veneration, who also offered sacrifice and prayers to avert the threatened woe. It is mentioned by Pausanias (ix. 22, 6), that what Pindar and Æschylus heard from the dwellers at Anthedon concerning this marine deity had furnished materials to both poets, and had sufficed to Æschylus for the creation of a drama. According to Welcker, the extant fragments of this drama seem to indicate that Glaukos describes a voyage which he made from Anthedon to Sicily. Passing the promontory of Eubœa, the shore of Zeus Kenæus, and the tomb of the unhappy Lichas (frag. 27), he came to Rhegium (frag. 31, 189; Herm. p. 12), and arrived finally at Himera (frag. 28) in Sicily. In the neighbourhood of this city was fought the battle of Himera, on which occasion the Sicilian Hellenes repulsed the