‘On his back, Phrixus! Quick, Helle! Hold tight!’ Down from the clouds flew a golden ram. It landed on the stone in front of Phrixus and Helle who, obeying the command of their mother, clutched at the thick fleece and fell forward onto the animal’s back. They were taken up into the air before the priest, their guards, Ino or anyone else had time to react.fn7 Phrixus and Helle gripped the golden fleece as the ram flew east over the narrow straits that separate Europe from Asia. Here a gust of wind and a sudden swift turn from the ram caused Helle to fall from the ram’s back. Phrixus cried out in vain for it to stop. He looked down in horror and saw his sister plummet to her death in the water of the straits, which the Greeks were to call in her honour ‘the Hellespont’ or Sea of Helle.fn8 A distraught Phrixus wept bitter tears into the fleece as the golden ram flew further east, towards the Propontis, or Sea of Marmara, and over the Bosporus until they saw the glittering waters of the great inland sea that we call today the Black Sea, but which for the Greeks presaged the outer limits of what was civilised and Grecian. Beyond its shores lay strangers, barbarians and the deranged denizens of the eastern edge of the world, so it was known to them as the Unfriendly Sea, the Hostile Sea, the Sea of Enmity.fn9 As they passed the Caucasus Mountains, Phrixus could make out the naked, sunburnt form of Prometheus manacled and spread out on the rock. The shadow of an eagle passed over it. Phrixus knew it was on its way to feast on Prometheus’s liver, a torture the Titan endured every day.fn10 On the far eastern shores of the Black Sea lay a kingdom of some wealth and size. This kingdom, which we would call today a province of the Republic of Georgia, was known in those days as Colchis. Its king was AEËTES, a son of Helios the sun Titan and an Oceanid called PERSEIS. He ruled from the capital, Aia. If Aeëtes was astonished to see a golden ram land in front of his palace and a youth step down off its back, he was too cautious and politic to say so. Mindful of the rules of hospitality, he invited Phrixus to dine with him. Phrixus, grateful for the honour, sacrificed the ram to Zeus and presented Aeëtes with its golden fleece. It seems hard on so amiable and obliging an animal, but with death came the ultimate compliment: Zeus, pleased with the sacrifice, raised the noble creature to the stars as Aries, the Ram. The GOLDEN FLEECE was a most precious gift. Aeëtes hung it on the branches of an oak that stood in a grove sacred to Ares, the god of war. Aeëtes had somewhere about the palace grounds a huge serpent,fn11 terrible to look at and endowed with the special gift of never closing its eyes. This was set to guard the oak and its valuable burden. At some point Phrixus married CHALCIOPE, one of Aeëtes’ daughters, and all was well in Colchis. Meanwhile, back in Boeotia, we left Athamas and Ino staring up at the sky as a golden ram, with Phrixus and Helle on board, disappeared into the clouds. It was not long before Athamas came to understand that the whole crop-failure/famine/oracle/human-sacrifice affair had been a ruse devised in the evil mind of his wife. In a frenzy, he lashed out and killed his son by her, Learchus.fn12 Ino fled with their other boy, Melicertes. But Athamas cornered them and, in her despair, Ino threw herself and Melicertes over the cliffs and into the sea. Dionysus, ever mindful of his foster mother’s kindness to him, did not let her drown, but instead transformed her into the immortal LEUCOTHEA, the ‘white goddess’ of the sea.fn13 Melicertes became PALAEMON, a dolphin-riding deity and guardian of ships. Athamas’s life had not been a happy onefn14, but we can see how it led indirectly, through Nephele’s intercession to save their twins, to the hanging of the Golden Fleece on the oak in the Grove of Ares in Colchis on the far shores of the Black, Unfriendly Sea, also called the Euxine Sea. I should say that all of the above is really backstory to the main backstory – whose narrative strands I will now try to separate here. Even setting aside the marriages of Athamas, his family was notorious. He had three quarrelsome and villainous brothers. One brother, Sisyphus, was soon to be doomed to push his boulder uphill for eternity as punishment for his many crimes and blasphemiesfn15. Another brother, SALMONEUS, tried to pass himself off as a god of thunder and storms and was blasted to atoms by Zeus for his impertinence. Just to make matters even more complicated, Salmoneus’s daughter TYRO married and had children by each of her uncles: with Athamas himself, with Sisyphus and with CRETHEUS, the third brother. Tyro’s eldest son by Cretheus was AESON, but she also had two sons by Poseidon – Pelias and Neleus.fn16 I pause to remind you that I am aware of how complicated and forgettable such divagations into the family tree may be, but they are relevant to the main line of our story. You mustn’t feel obliged to memorise these names and relationships. It is enough to get a sense of what all this portends. Cretheus ruled over IOLCOS, a city in Aeolia, the north-eastern region of mainland Greece that included Larissa and Pherae. Therefore Aeson, his son by his niece Tyro, was the rightful heir and would succeed to the throne when Cretheus died. But Aeson’s half-brothers, Pelias and Neleus, believed that they, as sons of Tyro and the great Olympian god Poseidon, had a claim not just to Iolcos but to all of greater Aeolia. Accordingly, the moment Cretheus died they besieged Iolcos. Aeson and his wife ALCIMEDEfn17, fearing that the city was lost, managed to smuggle out their firstborn child, JASON. Alcimede was friendly with the centaur CHIRON, and it was he who received and raised the boy. Shortly after, Pelias broke into the city and slaughtered every man, woman or child connected by blood to the throne, all but Aeson and Alcimede whom he threw in prison. While in captivity the couple had another son, PROMACHUS. It is worth mentioning too that Pelias’s and Neleus’s mother Tyro had been mistreated by SIDERO, Cretheus’s second wife. Pelias and Neleus ran Sidero down to a temple, in whose precincts they killed her. This proved to be a disastrous mistake, for the temple was dedicated to Hera. The Queen of Heaven, outraged at such desecration, swore instant enmity against these two sons of Poseidon. Of all the gods to make an enemy of, Hera was the most dangerous and implacable. So there we have it. A GOLDEN FLEECE far to the east. IOLCOS and Aeolia in the grip of the tyrannical and murderous Pelias, who rules the region cruelly but with a resolute grip that no rebel can hope to loosen. In fact, as we find today, rebellions from the outside nearly always faiclass="underline" familial quarrelling, dynastic feuding, party disunity, the palace coup and the stab in the back … these are what dislodge regimes and topple tyrants. Pelias knows this and is haunted by just enough suspicion and despotic paranoia to consult an oracle on the security of his throne. ‘One of your own blood will end the life of Pelias. Beware the man who comes from the country wearing but one sandal.’ Was that two people or one? If a man of his own blood would kill him, who could this single-sandaled rustic be? Did they know each other? Were they both blood relations? Were they one and the same? Why couldn’t oracles ever be straight? It really was too tiresome. Meanwhile, on the slopes of Mount Pelion, towering over Iolcos, the rightful heir to the city – Jason – is being tutored by the wise and clever Chiron.