GLAUCUS

Form: Glaukos.

Son of the Cretan Minos and Pasiphae. When playing in his infancy he fell into a jar of honey, and was stifled. His father, after a vain search for him, was told by the Curetes that only one person could find the child and bring him to life again. That was the man who should devise a suitable comparison for a cow in his herd, which became white, red, and black, alternately at intervals of four hours. The seers of the country being unable to solve the difficulty, Minos called in the seer Polyidus of Argos, the, great-grandson of Melampus. He read the riddle by comparing the cow to a blackberry or mulberry, which is white, red, and black at various stages of its growth. The corpse of the child he found by aid of the flight of a bird. Professing himself unable to revive the corpse, Minos, in anger, ordered him to be shut up with it in a vault. A snake crept up to the corpse, and Polyidus killed it: he then saw another snake revive its dead fellow by laying a herb upon it. With this herb he brought the dead child to life again. Finally Minos compelled him to teach the boy the art of prophecy. But on his return to Argos, Polyidus made the child spit into his mouth, which caused him to forget all that he bad learned.