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Athamas and Nephele |
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Athamas and Nephele |
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Athamas was the king of Thessaly and he lived in Halus, a city beside the Aegean Sea. However he was not married, because he could not find a woman beautiful enough to be his wife.
Early one morning Athamas was walking in the mountains, following a little river when from behind a large rock came the sound of laughing. He quietly climbed up the rock and peering over the top he saw three beautiful maidens swimming and diving in the river. One of the maidens was even more beautiful than the others with golden hair that hung like a cloak, and the king fell in love with her. Just at that moment he accidentally knocked a stone from the rock, it fell in the water with a splash, frightening the girls. They quickly dressed and flew away, although they did not have any wings.
The king returned to the spot again and again, but he never saw them. Nothing gave him any pleasure and he began to grow thin and pale. When it seemed that he may die from his grief Aphrodite appeared to him in a dream. She told him that the maidens returned to the place beside the rock at dawn after the new moon. He should hide in the wood and then steal the clothes of the girl he was in love with, so that she was not able to fly away with the others. The king remembered the dream when he awoke and waited for the new moon.
On the night of the New moon, the king set off for the rock, and was already hiding when the maidens arrived at dawn. While they were playing in the water Athamas stole the clothes of the most beautiful girl. Then the maidens saw him, two of them grabbed their clothes and fled. The third girl just sat weeping, hiding under the cloak of hair, begging the king to give her clothes back. He would not give them back until she promised to marry him, and he told her about Aphrodite's message. She at last consented and once dressed followed him back to the palace. She told him her name was Nephele (meaning cloud) and that she was a nymph.
They were married and had a son named Phrixus and a daughter named Helle. Hermes gave the children a ram with a golden fleece which would play with them and allow them to ride on its back.
Although King Athamas was very happy with his family except for one thing, every summer when it became hot and cloudless Nephele grew pale and went away, Athamas did not know where. She reappeared when the rain clouds came back. After this happened for several years, one year she did not come back. But shortly after her disappearance a beautiful woman named Ino came to the city.
Ino was a witch who drugged the king and made him forget Nephele and fall in love and marry her. They also had two children, a boy and a girl. Ino hated Phrixus and Helle and made them dress in rags and work in the house and fields, while her own children had the best of everything.
One day when Phrixus and Helle were out taking care of the sheep they met an old, poor woman, who they took pity on and brought home with them. The woman was taken into the house as a nurse and looked after all four children. But as she was really Nephelle in disguise she paid particular attention to Phrixus and Helle.
The children grew and Phrixus and Helle were more beautiful than Ino's own children, so she decided to kill them. Although all the children slept in the same room, Ino's children had crowns on their heads and beautiful covers. One night Phrixus was barely awake and he thought he dreamt the old nurse coming into the room and putting the crowns and covers on him and his sister. But it was not a dream, and when Ino came in with a dagger to kill her step children, she stabbed the two children without the crowns.
When Ino's children were found dead the next morning, and the nurse was nowhere to be seen, everybody believed Ino when she said the nurse must have killed her children. Because of Ino's murder of her own children, drought and famine came to the land. Every day the hot sun rose and blazed through the sky without a cloud. Athamas sent messengers to Delphi, but Ino bribed them before they went, paying them gold to bring back the message that Phrixus and Helle must be sacrificed to the gods.
The messengers brought back the message, and although the king was devastated he knew he could not disobey the gods. So Phrixus and Helle were wreathed in flowers and taken to the temple, followed by the weeping people. The golden ram walked with the children, and as they came within sight of the sea the gods spoke through him. The ram told the children to climb on his back and hold onto his horn. The children did as they were told and the ram flew away over the sea.
The ram flew Eastwards for many hours. Eventually Helle grew dizzy and tired, she slipped off the ram's back and fell into the sea where she drowned. The place she fell, the narrow sea between Europe and Asia, was from that day called Helle's Ford, or Hellespont.
Phrixus and the ram flew on over the Euxine Sea (Black Sea) until they reached a country named Colchis there the ram landed and promptly died as an offering to Zeus. Phrixus had his beautiful golden fleece stripped and hung on an oak tree in a dark wood where it was guarded by a Dragon. Phrixus married the king's daughter and lived a long happy life.
