EXPLANATION.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ovid and Riley, Henry T. (Henry Thomas)
The ancient writers mention three persons of the name of Glaucus: one was the son of Minos, the second of Hippolochus, and the third is the one here mentioned. Strabo calls him the son of Polybus, while other writers make him to have been the son of Phorbas, and others of Neptune. Being drowned, perhaps by accident, to do honour to his memory, it was promulgated that he had become a sea God, and the city of Anthedon, of which he was a native, worshipped him as such.
Athenæus says that he carried off Ariadne from the isle of Naxos, where Theseus had left her; on which Bacchus punished him by binding him to a vine. According to Diodorus Siculus, he appeared to the Argonauts, when overtaken by a storm. From Apollonius Rhodius we learn that he foretold to them that Hercules, and Castor and Pollux, would be received into the number of the Gods. It was also said, that in the battle which took place between Jason and the Tyrrhenians, he was the only person that escaped unwounded. Euripides, who is followed by Pausanias, says that he was the interpreter of Nereus, and was skilled in prophecy; and Nicander even says that it was from him that Apollo learned the art of prediction. Strabo and Philostratus say that he was metamorphosed into a Triton, which is a-kin to the description of his appearance here given by Ovid.
The place where he leaped into the sea was long remembered; and in the days of Pausanias ‘Glaucus’ Leap’ was still pointed out by the people of Anthedon. It is not improbable that he drowned himself for some reason which tradition failed to hand down to posterity.