Nerites
I wouldn’t be surprised if most people haven’t heard of Nerites. He didn’t make it into Edith Hamilton’s seminal work on Greek mythology, and though he earned a Wikipedia entry, it’s pretty sparse. According to the Theoi Project, a comprehensive glossary of mythological figures, his story comes from the Greek historian Aelian (c. 2 A.D.) who wrote about how a spiral shell of exceptional beauty came to be called a nerite. He claimed the story was well-known among sailors.
