Helle- Greek FigureMortal"Namesake of the Hellespont"

The Plot of Ino

Helle was a princess of Orchomenus in Boeotia, daughter of King Athamas and his first wife, the cloud nymph Nephele. Nephele had been fashioned by Zeus in the image of Hera to test the impious Ixion, and though she bore Athamas two children — Phrixus and Helle — the marriage did not last. After Nephele departed, Athamas married Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who became a cruel stepmother to her predecessor's children. Ino secretly parched the seed grain so the crops failed, then bribed the messengers sent to consult the oracle at Delphi to report that the famine would end only if Phrixus were sacrificed. Athamas reluctantly agreed, and the children were led to the altar.

The Flight on the Golden Ram

Before the sacrifice could be carried out, Nephele sent a miraculous golden-fleeced ram called Chrysomallus, offspring of Poseidon and the nymph Theophane, to rescue her children. The ram rose into the air and flew eastward toward Colchis at the edge of the known world. The children clung to its golden wool as it soared over land and sea.

As the ram crossed the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia, Helle lost her grip and fell into the waters below. She drowned in the churning current — or, according to some traditions preserved by Hyginus and later commentators, was rescued by Poseidon, who took her as his consort beneath the waves. Either way, the strait was named the Hellespont — "Sea of Helle" — in her memory.

Phrixus continued alone to Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and hung its golden fleece in the grove of Ares, guarded by a sleepless dragon — the fleece that Jason and the Argonauts would one day come to claim.