Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Glaucus, young son of Minos and Pasiphaë, was chasing a mouse (or playing with a ball) when he fell into a jar (pithos) of honey and drowned. Minos searched; the Curetes (or an oracle) declared that whoever could find the aptest comparison for a miraculous calf in Minos’s herds—born thrice a day, changing color white, red, then black—would also find the boy. The seer Polyidus of Argos (or Corinth) likened the calf to a ripening mulberry (or blackberry), which passes through those colors; he then found Glaucus in the honey jar by observing an owl driving bees (or by divination). Minos demanded that Polyidus restore the child to life and shut him in a tomb with the corpse. A snake approached; Polyidus killed it; a second snake brought an herb and revived the first. Polyidus applied the same herb to Glaucus and raised him. Minos then required that Polyidus teach Glaucus prophecy before leaving Crete. Polyidus did so, but as he departed he told the boy to spit into his mouth; Glaucus did, and forgot the art—so the seer kept his own gift. The tale joins Cretan royal mishap, seercraft, and a folktale herb-of-life motif under Minos’s coercive hospitality.