Helle

The women of Boeotia secretly parched the wheat grain before it was sown. The earth then failed to produce its yearly crop. Athamas, who ruled in Boeotia, sent envoys to Delphi to ask how the land could be freed from the barrenness. Ino, his second wife, persuaded them to bring back a false answer. They declared that the crops would return only if Phrixus, Athamas’s son by Nephele, were sacrificed to Zeus.

The people compelled Athamas to take Phrixus to the altar. As he was about to be sacrificed, Nephele snatched him away with his sister Helle. She gave them a ram with a golden fleece, which she had received from Hermes. The children climbed onto its back, and the ram carried them eastwards over land and sea towards Colchis.

When they reached the Thracian Chersonese, Helle became giddy and fell from the ram into the sea. The waters took her life. They were thereafter called the Hellespont, the Sea of Helle. Phrixus continued alone on the ram, flying north-east across the sea later called the Euxine, or Black Sea.

The ram eventually reached Colchis, where Phrixus married Chalciope, the daughter of King Aeetes. He sacrificed the ram, and Aeetes fastened its golden fleece to a beech tree in the grove of Ares. Helle’s fall gave the straits their name, while the ram’s fleece remained in Colchis.