In Greek mythology, Melicertes (Ancient Greek: Μελικέρτης, romanized: Melikértēs, sometimes Melecertes), later called Palaemon or Palaimon (Παλαίμων), was a Boeotian prince as the son of King Athamas and Ino, daughter of King Cadmus of Thebes.

Here it was found by his uncle Sisyphus, who had it removed to Corinth, and by command of the Nereids instituted the Isthmian Games and sacrifices in his honor.

[4] Palaemon appears for the first time in Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris, where he is already the "guardian of ships".

[5] The paramount identification in the Latin poets of the Augustan age is with Portunus, the Roman god of safe harbours, memorably in Virgil's Georgics.

Ovid's treatment in his Fasti is the earliest to identify the Isthmus as the location, though without literally naming it:A land there is, shrunk within narrow bounds, which repels twin seas, and single in itself, is lashed by two-fold waters.In later Latin poets there are numerous identifications of Palaemon with the sanctuary at the Isthmus, where no archaeological evidence was found for a pre-Augustan cult.

In 1956, excavations at Isthmia under the direction of Broneer[15] uncovered the small sanctuary of Palaemon, which eventually had a tiny Roman round temple in the Corinthian order, which appeared on coins of Corinth in the 2nd century CE; it was the successor to two previous more modest architectural phases of the sanctuary.

Worship was characterized by the dedication of hundreds of wheelmade oil lamps of a distinct type.