Note 10 — Chapter II · ISLANDS OF THE BLEST TRANSLATION

It is not improbable that this Ino Leukothea was originally a goddess who was later turned into a “Heroine” (identified with the daughter of Kadmos for reasons no longer recoverable) and only afterwards turned back again into a goddess. But for the Homeric age she was essentially a mortal who had become a goddess: for this reason, just because she was an example of such deification of mortals, she remained an interesting character to later writers; cf. in addition to the well-known passages in Pindar, etc., Cic., T.D. i, 28. Only what the actual conception of the people and their poets was—not what may possibly be suggested as the doubtful background of such conceptions—concerns me in this as in many other cases.