In the ancient Minyan Orkhomenes in Boeotia, the son of the wind god Aeolus, King Athamas, ruled. He had two children from the cloud goddess Nephele - a son, Phrixus, and a daughter, Hella. Afamant cheated on Nephele and married the daughter of Cadmus, Ino. Ino disliked the children from her husband's first marriage and planned to destroy them. She persuaded the Orkhomen women to dry the seeds prepared for sowing. The Orkhomenians sowed the fields with dried seeds, but nothing sprouted in their always fertile fields. The Orkhomenians were threatened with famine. Then Athamas decided to send an embassy to the sacred Delphi to ask the oracle of the archer Apollo about the reason for the infertility of the fields. The insidious Ino bribed the ambassadors, and they, returning from Delphi, brought a false answer from the oracle.
“This is the answer the soothsayer Pythia gave,” the bribed ambassadors said to Athamas. “Sacrifice your son Phrixus to the gods, and the gods will return fertility to the fields.”
Athamas, in order to avoid the great disaster that threatened Orkhomenes, decided to sacrifice his beloved son. Ino triumphed: her plan to destroy Frixus was a success.
Everything was ready for the sacrifice. Young Phrixus was about to fall under the priest’s knife, but suddenly a golden-fleeced ram appeared, a gift from the god Hermes. Frix's mother, the goddess Nephele, sent the ram to save her children. Phrixus and his sister Hella sat on the golden-fleeced ram, and the ram carried them through the air far to the north.
The ram rushed quickly. Far below lay fields and forests, and silver rivers meandered between them. Aries rushes above the mountains. Here comes the sea. Aries rushes over the sea. Gella was frightened; she could not stay on the ram for fear. Gella fell into the sea, and was swallowed up by the ever-noisy sea waves. Frix could not save his sister. She died. From that time on, the sea where Gella died began to be called the Hellespont (Sea of Gella; modern Dardanelles Strait).
The ram with Phrixus rushed further and further and finally descended on the banks of Phasis in distant Colchis, where the son of the god Helios, the wizard Eet, ruled. He raised Eet Phrixus, and when he matured, he married him to his daughter Chalciope. The golden ram, who saved Phrixus, was sacrificed to the great cloud-killer Zeus. Eet hung the golden fleece of the ram in the sacred grove of the god of war Ares. The fleece was to be guarded by a terrible, flame-spewing dragon, who never closed his eyes to sleep.
The rumor about this golden fleece spread throughout Greece. The descendants of Athamas, the father of Phrixus, knew that the salvation and prosperity of their family depended on the possession of the rune, and they wanted to get it at any cost.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru