Golden Fleece, in Greek mythology, was the golden wool of a flying ram. The fleece was the object of a famous quest by the Greek hero Jason and a band of men called the Argonauts.
The story of the Golden Fleece began in the Greek kingdom of Thessaly, which was ruled by King Athamas. The king had two wives. Athamas and his first wife, Nephele, had a son named Phrixus and a daughter named Helle. Ino, the king’s second wife, hated the children. She persuaded Phrixus and Helle to eat all the seeds that the Greek farmers had intended to plant. Ino convinced them that their action would please the gods. Thus, no crops grew, and a terrible famine occurred.
Athamas sent a messenger to the oracle at Delphi to learn how to end the famine (see Oracle). After the messenger returned, Ino bribed him to give the king a false report. The messenger told Athamas that the famine would end only if Phrixus and Helle were sacrificed to the gods. The king sadly agreed to sacrifice his children. However, Nephele saved them. She sent them to a distant land called Colchis on a flying ram that had a golden fleece.
On the way to Colchis, the ram flew over the Dardanelles, a strait between Europe and Asia. Helle fell off the ram’s back and drowned. In her memory, the strait was called the Hellespont in ancient times. Phrixus arrived safely in Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram to the god Zeus and hung its fleece in a grove of trees. Jason later captured the Golden Fleece and brought it back to Greece.
