Glaucus of Corinth, father of Bellerophon in Greek mythology

Glaucus of Corinth is the son of Sisyphus and the father of Bellerophon. He should not be confused with the sea god Glaucus of Anthedon, who loved Scylla, nor with the Lycian Glaucus of the Iliad — who is in fact his own great-grandson.

A pedigree recited on the battlefield

The clearest statement of the line comes at one of the Iliad’s odder moments. In Book 6, the Greek Diomedes and the Lycian Glaucus meet between the armies and, instead of fighting, exchange genealogies. The Lycian recites: Aeolus fathered Sisyphus, “the most cunning of men”; Sisyphus fathered Glaucus; and Glaucus fathered blameless Bellerophon.

They then discover their grandfathers were guest-friends, refuse to fight each other, and swap armour — Glaucus giving gold for bronze, which Homer notes drily was a poor trade. The passage matters here because it is the earliest and most authoritative attestation of Glaucus’ place in the Corinthian line, and it is delivered in the middle of a battle as a reason not to have one.

A competing tradition makes Poseidon the true father of Bellerophon, with Glaucus as the human or dynastic father. That version explains the divine favour that lets Bellerophon master Pegasus, foaled by the same god. This site follows Homer rather than stacking the two accounts as if they came from one narrative.

Killed by his own horses

Glaucus reigns at Corinth, or at Potniae in Boeotia depending on the source, and breeds racehorses with an obsessive dedication that turns out to be his undoing.

The reasons given for what happens vary, and each is a different kind of offence. In one, he refuses to let his mares breed, keeping them frustrated to make them run faster, and Aphrodite — insulted by a man who denies animals what she governs — drives them mad. In another, he feeds them human flesh to make them fierce. In a third, they simply drink from a cursed spring.

The outcome is constant. At the funeral games of Pelias at Iolcus, the mares bolt, throw him from the chariot, and tear him apart. The man who mastered horses is destroyed by the specific animal he mastered — a shape Greek myth uses often, and which reappears in his own family when Bellerophon, having tamed the unmasterable horse, is thrown from it.

The ghost at the Isthmus

Glaucus does not stop after death. Pausanias, describing the racecourse at Olympia in the second century CE, discusses the Taraxippus — literally “horse-disturber” — a spot on the track where teams reliably panicked and crashed, and which Greek charioteers approached with sacrifices and dread.

He records several candidates for the identity of the Olympian Taraxippus, and then states plainly that the one at the Isthmus of Corinth is Glaucus, son of Sisyphus. The man killed by maddened horses at one funeral games came back to madden horses at another, permanently.

This is worth noticing because it converts a minor genealogical link into something with a physical location and a live cult practice. Glaucus was not merely a name in a family tree; he was a hazard on a racetrack that professional drivers made offerings to avoid, centuries after the myth was fixed.