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Updated: May 13, 2025
And so the sons of Phrixus, drenched and trembling in fear of a horrible doom, were borne along by the waves helplessly. And the force of the wind had snatched away their sails and shattered in twain the hull, tossed as it was by the breakers.
The old Hellens said that it hung in Colchis, which we call the Circassian coast, nailed to a beech-tree in the war-God's wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud-nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king.
But his second wife was jealous of her stepchildren, Phrixus and Helle, and plotted their death. She went about very cunningly to compass her bad end. First of all she persuaded the women of the country to roast the seed corn secretly before it was committed to the ground. So next year no crops came up and the people died of famine.
Since that time, Phrixus had married the king's daughter; and the two young princes had been born and brought up at Colchis, and had spent their play-days in the outskirts of the grove, in the center of which the Golden Fleece was hanging upon a tree. They were now on their way to Greece, in hopes of getting back a kingdom that had been wrongfully taken from their father.
Theopompus relates that when the Bœotarchs had decided to leave the country, Phrixus, a Spartan, came from Agesilaus and offered them ten talents to be gone, thus paying them for doing what they had long before determined to do of their own accord. XXXIII. I cannot tell, however, how it was that Theopompus discovered this fact, and that no other historian mentions it.
So he went down in his golden chariot, and his daughters by his side, Medeia the fair witch-maiden, and Chalciope, who had been Phrixus' wife, and behind him a crowd of servants and soldiers, for he was a rich and mighty prince.
Cretheus, the father of Æson, and Pelias, was of the race of Aeolus, and of the race of Aeolus, too, was Athamas, the king who ruled in Thebes at the same time that Cretheus ruled in Iolcus. And the first children of Athamas were Phrixus and Helle. "Ah, Phrixus and ah, Helle," Alcimide lamented, "what griefs you have brought on the race of Aeolus! And what griefs you yourselves suffered!
They were fearful of Aea and of their uncle King Æetes, and they would gladly go with Jason and the Argonauts back to Greece. They would help Jason, they said, to persuade Æetes to give the Golden Fleece peaceably to them. Their mother was the daughter of Æetes Chalciope, whom the king had given in marriage to Phrixus, his guest.
She said Phrixus and Helle must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the gods, who sent the famine. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the priest stood ready with his knife, when out of the clouds came the Golden Ram, and took them on his back and vanished.
Now when the thralls had laid a banquet ready before them, and they had refreshed themselves with warm baths, gladly did they please their souls with meat and drink. And thereafter Aeetes questioned the sons of his daughter, addressing them with these words: "Sons of my daughter and of Phrixus, whom beyond all strangers I honoured in my halls, how have ye come returning back to Aea?
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