Glaucus

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Glaucus is a figure from Greek mythology recalled by Dante in the Paradiso as a term of comparison for his own interior transformation. According to the notes to the canto, Glaucus was a fisherman of Boeotia: observing that the fish he had caught, after eating a certain herb, leapt back into the sea alive and full of vigor, he too wished to taste it and, feeling himself transformed into another nature, plunged into the sea having become a sea divinity. The myth, of Ovidian derivation, is invoked by Dante to signify an event impossible in nature such as the passage of man to a superhuman condition. The biblical reference «divinae consortes naturae» clarifies the meaning of the term consorte, understood as "sharing the same lot" of the sea divinities. Glaucus does not appear as a character present in the scene, but only as a mythical example evoked by Dante to express the concept of transhumanization.