Look upwards on a clear, dark night, and you might trace the faint outline of a celestial ram, Aries. This is not just any random assortment of stars. It is a monument, a story woven into the fabric of the cosmos, the legend of the Golden Fleece and a daring escape. This constellation, modest in its stellar brilliance, carries a tale of jealousy, sacrifice, and divine intervention, echoing down through millennia from an age of myth and wonder.
The Shadow of a Jealous Queen
Our story unfolds in the ancient Greek kingdom of Boeotia, ruled by King Athamas. His first wife was Nephele, a nymph of the clouds, and with her, he had two children, Prince Phrixus and Princess Helle. They were the joy of their parents, living a life of royal comfort. However, happiness in myths often proves to be as ephemeral as morning mist. King Athamas, in a turn of fate or folly, set Nephele aside and took a new wife, Ino, the daughter of the famed Cadmus of Thebes. Ino brought with her not only royal lineage but also a heart consumed by jealousy towards her stepchildren. She saw Phrixus and Helle as obstacles to her own sons inheriting the throne.
Ino was a cunning woman. She devised a devious plan to rid herself of Phrixus and Helle. First, she secretly persuaded the women of the kingdom to parch the seed grain before it was sown. The farmers, unaware of this sabotage, planted the grain as usual, but the crops failed disastrously. Famine loomed over Boeotia. The people grew desperate, and King Athamas, deeply troubled, decided to send messengers to the Oracle of Delphi to seek guidance from Apollo on how to end the blight.
This was the moment Ino had been waiting for. She intercepted the king’s messengers, or bribed them, to return with a false prophecy. The fabricated message from the Oracle declared that the famine would only cease if Prince Phrixus and Princess Helle were sacrificed to Zeus. King Athamas was horrified. He loved his children dearly and resisted the terrible decree. But the famine worsened, and the pressure from his starving people, manipulated by Ino’s whispers and the dire prophecy, became unbearable. With a heavy heart, he finally, tragically, agreed to the sacrifice.
A Golden Deliverance
As Phrixus and Helle were led to the sacrificial altar, their mother, Nephele, watched from the heavens in anguish. Her heart broke for her innocent children, victims of a cruel plot. In her desperation, she prayed fervently to the gods for their salvation. Hermes, the swift messenger god, heard her plea. He, or some say Zeus himself, sent a miraculous creature to rescue the doomed siblings: a magnificent winged ram with a fleece of pure, shining gold. This was Chrysomallus, a divine creature whose radiance could outshine the sun.
Just as the sacrificial knife was about to fall, the golden ram descended from the skies. It gently nudged Phrixus and Helle, urging them to climb onto its broad, woolly back. The children, startled but sensing the ram’s benevolent nature, did as they were bidden. With Phrixus holding on tightly to the ram’s horns and Helle clinging to her brother, Chrysomallus spread its powerful wings and soared into the air, carrying them away from King Athamas’s court and Ino’s wicked grasp.
The journey was long and perilous, over land and sea. The golden ram flew eastward, towards the distant land of Colchis, on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. For a while, the children felt a sense of exhilaration, of miraculous escape. But the vastness of the world below was daunting. As they flew over the strait separating Europe and Asia, tragedy struck. Helle, perhaps tired or dizzy from the height and the speed, lost her grip on her brother and tumbled from the ram’s back into the churning waters below. Phrixus, heartbroken, could do nothing to save her. The strait, to this day, bears her name: the Hellespont, meaning “Sea of Helle”, now known as the Dardanelles.
The Hellespont, a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey, connects the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Its mythological naming after Helle serves as a poignant geographical marker for this part of the Golden Fleece legend. This waterway has been historically significant for trade and military campaigns for millennia.
Sanctuary and Celestial Honor
Devastated by the loss of his sister, Phrixus continued his journey alone on the back of the golden ram. Finally, Chrysomallus landed safely in Colchis, a kingdom ruled by King Aeetes, son of the sun god Helios. King Aeetes welcomed the young prince Phrixus kindly, perhaps recognizing the divine favor that had brought him there. He listened to Phrixus’s tale of woe and escape and offered him sanctuary and even the hand of his daughter, Chalciope, in marriage.
Overwhelmed with gratitude for his deliverance, Phrixus knew he had to honor the magnificent creature that had saved him. Following divine instruction, or perhaps out of reverence, he sacrificed the golden ram to Zeus Phyxius, the protector of fugitives (or in some versions, to Ares, the god of war). The precious Golden Fleece, however, was preserved. Phrixus presented it to King Aeetes, who, recognizing its immense value and divine origin, hung it on an oak tree in a sacred grove dedicated to Ares. There, it was guarded by a fearsome, ever-watchful dragon that never slept, ensuring its safety.
The gods were pleased with the sacrifice and the fate of the brave ram. To honor its courage and its role in saving Phrixus, Zeus placed the image of Chrysomallus among the stars. Thus, the constellation Aries was born, a celestial tribute to the golden ram, forever galloping across the night sky, a reminder of its heroic deed. The Golden Fleece itself would later become the object of the famous quest by Jason and the Argonauts, but that is another epic tale for another time.
Aries in the Night Sky
Today, when we look for Aries in the celestial sphere, we find a relatively faint constellation. It is nestled between Pisces to its west and Taurus to its east. Despite its lack of exceptionally bright stars, Aries holds a place of great historical importance in astronomy. Its principal stars form a somewhat crooked line or a small triangle, which can be imagined as the head or horns of the Ram.
The brightest star in Aries is Hamal, or Alpha Arietis. Its name comes from the Arabic phrase meaning “head of the ram,” appropriately marking the Ram’s head. The second brightest is Sheratan, Beta Arietis, whose name means “the two signs,” possibly referring to its historical pairing with Gamma Arietis in marking the vernal equinox. Mesarthim, Gamma Arietis, is a beautiful double star, easily split in small telescopes, and sometimes referred to as the “First Star in Aries” due to its proximity to the historical vernal equinox point.
Finding Aries can be a bit of a challenge for novice stargazers due to its dimness. It is best seen during autumn and winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere. One way to locate it is to find the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus; Aries will be to the west of this prominent group. Another way is to use the Great Square of Pegasus as a guide, drawing a line from its western stars downwards towards the horizon.
The Wandering Point of Spring
For thousands of years, Aries held a particularly special position. Around two thousand years ago, the Sun appeared to be in the constellation Aries during the vernal equinox, the moment in spring when the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading north, marking the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This specific location was known as the “First Point of Aries” and was used as the zero point for measuring celestial longitude, or right ascension, along the ecliptic, the Sun’s apparent path through the sky.
However, due to a slow wobble in Earth’s rotational axis, a phenomenon called precession of the equinoxes, this First Point of Aries has gradually drifted westward out of the constellation Aries. It now lies in the neighboring constellation Pisces and is slowly making its way towards Aquarius. Despite this astronomical shift, the vernal equinox point is often still referred to by its traditional name, the First Point of Aries, in astrological contexts and sometimes in older astronomical texts. This highlights the deep historical roots of Aries in our understanding of the heavens and the changing seasons.
The story of Aries, the Golden Fleece, and the celestial Ram is a powerful example of how ancient cultures connected with the night sky. They did not see just pinpricks of light, but characters, heroes, and divine beasts involved in epic dramas. Each star, each constellation, had a meaning, a narrative that helped them understand their world and their place within it. So, the next time you find yourself under a starry sky, try to seek out the faint pattern of Aries. Remember Phrixus and Helle, the wondrous golden ram, and the enduring power of myth to transform a collection of distant suns into a timeless legend, a golden fleece adorning the darkness.
