STORY OF ARIES

STORY OF ARIES

Aries, the ram with the golden fleece, from the Atlas Coelestis of John Flamsteed (1729). In the sky, the ram is without its fleece, which was left behind on Earth. Reluctantly, Athamas took his son to the top of Mount Laphystium, overlooking his palace at Orchomenus. He was about to sacrifice Phrixus to Zeus when Nephele intervened to save her son, sending down from the sky a winged ram with a golden fleece. Phrixus climbed on the ram’s back and was joined by his sister Helle, who feared for her own life. They flew off eastwards to Colchis, which lay on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, under the Caucasus Mountains (the modern Georgia). On the way Helle’s grip failed and she fell into the channel between Europe and Asia, the Dardanelles, which the Greeks named the Hellespont in her memory. On reaching Colchis, Phrixus sacrificed the ram in gratitude to Zeus. He presented its golden fleece to the fearsome King Aeëtes of Colchis who, in return, gave Phrixus the hand of his daughter Chalciope. Nephele placed the image of the ram among the stars. Eratosthenes, though, said that the ram was immortal, which would have made sacrificing it highly problematic. Instead, in this version, the ram itself shed its fleece and flew into the sky of its own accord. Either way, the lack of the radiant fleece was said by the mythologists to account for the constellation’s relative faintness. After Phrixus died his ghost returned to Greece to haunt his cousin Pelias, who had seized the throne of Iolcus in Thessaly. The true successor to the throne was Jason. Pelias promised to give up the throne to Jason if he brought home the golden fleece from Colchis. This was the challenge that led to the epic voyage of Jason and the Argonauts. When he reached Colchis, Jason first asked King Aeëtes politely for the fleece, which hung on an oak in a sacred wood, guarded by a huge unsleeping serpent. King Aeëtes rejected Jason’s request. Fortunately for the expedition, the king’s daughter, Medea, fell in love with Jason and offered to help him steal the fleece. At night the two crept into the wood where the golden fleece hung, shining like a cloud lit by the rising Sun. Medea bewitched the serpent so that it slept while Jason snatched the fleece. According to Apollonius Rhodius, the fleece was as large as the hide of a young cow, and when Jason slung it over his shoulder it reached his feet. The ground shone from its glittering golden wool as Jason and Medea escaped with it. Once free of the pursuing forces of King Aeëtes, Jason and Medea used the fleece to cover their wedding bed. The final resting place of the fleece was in the temple of Zeus at Orchomenus, where Jason hung it on his return to Greece.