PREHISTORIC DACIA

PART 4 – Ch.XXVI

Prehistoric monuments of metallurgic art in Dacia

Chryseion Koas – The Golden Fleece consecrated to the god Mars,

in the mountainous region called Colchis (Colti)

PART 4

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XXVI.1. The Greek legend about Phrixus and Helle. The Argonauts depart for Colchis.

The legend of the Argonauts goes back to a very remote antiquity. Homer himself mentions this expedition as an archaic event.

A great many historical, ethnical and geographical matters are connected to the Argonauts’ legend, matters regarding the lands from the Lower Istru. Especially mentioned in the Argonauts’ legend are the very advanced culture of the population from the Istru (Oceanos potamos), and a series of very remarkable monuments from the point of view of their art, religion and customs.

The subject of this legend is the following:

Athamas, an ancient Pelasgian king of Thebe of Boeotia, was first married with Ino, Cadmus’ daughter. But after a while he repudiates Ino on the order of the oracle, weds Nephele and has with her a son Phrixus and a daughter Helle. But Nephele dies and Ino becoming Athamas’ wife a second time, and powerful in his house, starts to persecute Nephele’s children. During these times there happens to be a great drought and famine in Boeotia, and Ino counsels Athamas to consult the oracle of Delphi. But on the other hand she ensures in secret that the oracle shall give the answer she wanted, namely that this calamity will cease only when king Athamas will sacrifice one of his children. Upon receiving the oracle’s answer, Athamas calls his son Phrixus from the field, asking him to bring at the same time the most beautiful ram in the flock. This ram though starts talking (a gift from a divinity), reveals to Phrixus and his sister all the hidden plans of their step mother and urges them to climb on his back, so that he could save their life.

According to another version of this old legend, king Athamas is forced by the workers of the fields, who suffer the effects of the drought, to take Phrixus to the altar to be sacrificed, but Nephele sends a ram with a golden fleece, which she had received as a gift from Hermes, to transport her children by air, over earth and sea, to the land named Colchis. Helle falls though in the sea at the strait between Europe and Asia, which receives the name Hellespont as a result of this tragedy, while Phrixus reaches the region of Colchis. Here, in gratitude for his escape, he sacrifices the ram to Jove Phyxios, and presents the fleece to king Aietes, from the country called Aia, who then nails it in Colchis on an oak tree, in the grove consecrated to the god Mars, where it is guarded by a dragon which never slept (Apollodorus, Bibl. I. cap. 9; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonauticon. Ed. Didot. 1878; Orpheus, Argonautica, Ed. Schneider, 1803; Diodorus Siculus, lib. IV. c. 40 seqq; Philostephanus Cyraeneus, fragm. 37 in Fragmenta Hist. Graec. Vol. III. p. 34).

This is in short the legendary Greek tradition about the origin of the golden fleece from the land of the Colchi.

In these same times reigns in the south west of Thessaly, in Iolcus, king Pelias, who had usurped the throne of this little land by ousting his step brother Eson. To get rid also of Eson’s son, Iason, Pelias sends him to bring back the sacred golden fleece from the shady grove of Mars from Colchis.

Iason invites the most famous heroes of his time to accompany him on this journey. According to the ancient legends, in this expedition took part the following heroes: Hercules, Jove’s sons Castor and Pollux, Theseus the son of Egeus, Anceus the son of Lycurg, Leitus the son of Alectorus, Orpheus the great singer, Zetes and Calais the sons of Boreas from the region of the Getae (Silius Italicus, Punica, lib. VIII. v. 501-502) and other young heroes from Iolcus, Orchomenos and Pylos.

All these heroes, called in fact Minyi [1], 54 in number and looking for glory, embark on the ship called Argo, built by Iason for this purpose with Athena’s help, and in which the Goddess had fixed a piece from the sacred prophetic oak of the Pelasgians from Dodona.

[1. Most of the Argonauts traced their origin back to Minyas, an ancient and rich king, who had founded the city of Orchomenos in Boeotia, and whose mother had been Callirrhoe, the daughter of the Ocean (Istru)].

Before leaving, the Argonaut heroes pledge loyalty and compliance to Iason. In this oath they invoke firstly the old divinity of Oceanos or Istru, of the Pontos and of that extreme water Thetys, then Proteus and Triton, secondary divinities of the same Homeric Ocean (Orpheus, Argonautica, v. 333).

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