Melicertes
(
Μελικέρτης). In Greek mythology the son of Athamas and
Ino, and changed after his death by drowning into the marine deity Palaemon, while his mother
became Leucothea. (See
Ino.) His name
(=
Melkart), however, shows him to have been originally a Phœnician
god. Like Ino-Leucothea, he was worshipped on all the coast of the Mediterranean, especially
on that of Megara and at the Isthmus of Corinth, where he was so closely connected with the
cult of Poseidon that the Isthmian Games, originally instituted in honour of this god, came to
be looked upon as the funeral games of Melicertes. The Romans regarded him as a beneficent god
of the sea, and identified him with Portunus, the god of harbours.