In the tenth also, you will see the madness of Athamas and Ino’s flight, how she fled into the swell of the sea with newborn Melicertes. So the murderous mother killed her sons in madness.
Athamas their father, under the punishment […] attested that he had beside his hearth Themisto the destroyer of her own offspring, was tormented by the maddening lash of Pan: he rushed among his flocks, and harried the innocent troops of woolly bleaters while he believed himself to be flogging his servants. One he lifted, thinking her to be his wedded wife—it was a nanny-goat he found, with a […] of newborn kids at her milky udder. He tied hairy legs tight with two ropes ; and undoing the belt that ran round his loins, he flogged the body of the false Ino there held fast, without noticing the changeling form, for always in his ear sounded the thuds of the lash of Cronion Pan. Often he leapt from his seat restless, hearing with terrified ears the hiss of serpents. Many a time he bent his bow, and setting an arrow to the drawn string, he drew at an imaginary mark and struck the unwounded air. He would see the serpentine image of the goddess of Tartaros, and leap up scared at the many-coloured vision of the […], spitting snowy foam to witness his frenzy, rolling eyes drunken and full of threats. His eyes grew bloodshot as he stared about under vagrant impulses ; inside his wagging head the flimsy brains rolled about behind his brows.
A third part of his soul was lost; steady thoughts were gone from his crazy brain: the glances of the maddened man went wildly round with flickering movements ; the hair of his untended head shook disordered over his back. His mouth moved stammering ; when he opened his lips he sent out into the air meaningless words of strange outlandish sound. The blasts of the Eumenides had carried away the troubles of mortal life, and his tongue was laden with the cries of madness. When he moved his face about he saw as his forehead turned a false transformed shape of the unseen Megaira. So the madman shook with a distracted spasm, and tried to tear the whip of snakes from the grim hand of the reason-destroying goddess; he bared his sword in the face of the Avenger, and tried to cut the viper-curls of Tisiphone. And he babbled nonsense to the wall before him, for he saw a shadow shape, a deceitful […] of the shape of Artemis ; this empty form eyes beheld and the imitated shapes made him want to go hunting,
At last after the fourth year, after many tears, Ino returned to her home ; but when the wife saw her husband mad, and Themisto mother of men children, she received a double shock. The husband did not know his wife when he saw Ino, recovered after so long a time ; but in his passion for the stag-hunting chase, he was off to the heights nimbleknee with storm-swift boot. He saw his son as if he were an antlered beast ; holding the bow ready bent he leapt unchecked on Learchos, whom he saw in the false form of a stag with lofty antlers, his limbs like a wild beast. The boy fled in fear running with quicker knees ; the father with frenzied hands drew and shot through the […], and stopt his young son with a child-slaying bolt. He cut off the head with his knife and knew it not, turned stag by his fancy ; laughing he felt the hair at the top of the bloodstained cheek of the face unmarked, and pawed over his game, as he thought, then rushed with mad leaps and rolling eyes to find the mother, while his boy Learchos was gasping still, and still unburied. None of the servants came near him with quick foot he went wandering through the seven chambers of his house, calling aloud for the son whom he had killed. In the hall he espied little Melicertes who had just been brought in, and setting a cauldron over the hearth, a steaming cauldron, he laid his son in it: the fire blazed up, the murderous cauldron bubbled with boiling water,
“His son called out for papa but none of the servants could help. Ino his mother came in like a stormwind, and snatched him from the cauldron parboiled and half consumed. Then she ran out bounding with wild-roaming feet swift as the wind; she traversed the dust of the White Plain and for that reason she was named after it Leucothea, the White Goddess.
Athamas mad was out of the hall, stirring his knees like the wind and pursuing Ino over the hills in vain, —she was too quick for him. But when the raving husband with staggering foot caught […] at that moment the unhappy woman had […] by the sea which washed her foot, moaning in plaintive tones over her crying child, while she upbraided Cronion and Maia’s son his messenger :
A fine reward you have given me, Flashthunderbolt, for the care of Bacchos ! See this boy, Lysios’ agemate, half burnt to death! If it please you, strike down with your merciless bolt mother and son together, the little one nursed in one bosom with your divine Dionysos ! Child, 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 has no mercy ? Either sword or water shall receive you : if needs must, better to die in the sea than by the sword.
I know where this disaster came from, Foil […] your mother : I know ! It is Nephele’s 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, sailing aloft on 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, stable friend of Glaucos, might save you, pity your Ino as once he pitied Phoibos […]. The fate of unburied Learchos I may see also dead, unburied, unwept, undone, panting 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 Danae in her floating chest ! I have been justly punished for my impiety. As […] made seedless the earth’s lifegiving furrow, so Cronion has made my family seedless. A kind of stepmother, planned to mow down the bastard plants of Athamas, and Hera, the real stepmother of newly nurtured Dionysos, angry with me.”
She spoke, and with trembling feet sprang into the sea, swiftly diving with her son. Seabluehair […] his arms to receive Leucothea, and took her into the divine company in the deep waters. She helps ever since the seamen who […] their way, and now she is Ino of the Sea, a Nereid who has charge of untumultuous calm,
So Cronides pointed her out to the mother of Lyaios, because she owed it to Bromios that she was a goddess. Semele in her joy addressed her seafaring sister in mockery :
Ino, you have the sea, Semele has gained the round heavens ! Give me place ; I had an immortal husband in Cronides the plower of my field, who brought forth the fruit of my birth instead of me; but you were wedded to a mortal mate Athamas, the murderer of your family. Your son’s lot is the sea, but my son will come to the house of Zeus to dwell in the sky. I will not compare heavenly Dionysos with Melicertes down in the water.”
That is how Semele the heavenly bride yelled out in mockery of her sister Ino’s life who dwelt in the sea.
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