Chrysomallus

Region/Culture: Southern Europe (Greek)
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts (divine flying golden-fleeced ram)
Mythical Attributes: An immortal ram whose fleece was solid gold, able to fly through the air and to speak with a human voice.
Role in Mythos: Sent by the cloud-nymph Nephele to carry her children to safety, its sacrificed fleece became the Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts later crossed the world to seize.
Relation to Humans: The ram rescued two mortal children from sacrifice and bore them across sea and sky, though it could not keep Helle from slipping into the water. After delivering Phrixus to Colchis it gave up its own life, and the gold it left behind drew a shipful of heroes to the edge of the known world.

High over open water, faster than any bird, a ram was running on nothing. Its fleece threw the morning sun back in hard yellow flashes, and on its back two children pressed themselves into the wool and into each other, a boy and his smaller sister, the coast of Greece already shrinking behind them. The sea below went on without a seam. The girl’s grip was the weaker of the two.

The children were Phrixus and Helle, and by rights they should already have been dead. Their stepmother Ino had wanted them gone and went about it with patience. She had the seed grain parched before it was sown so that nothing came up, and when the starving people sent to the oracle for a remedy, she saw to it that the answer came back twisted: the land would only recover if Phrixus were given to Zeus on the altar. The crowd pressed, the king gave way, and the boy was led up the mountain with ceremonial fillets bound across his brow. His true mother would not have it. Nephele was a cloud, a nymph shaped from mist, and she came down through the air and set both children on the back of a ram with a fleece of gold.

Where the ram itself came from depends on who tells it. In one account it was simply a gift, handed to Nephele by Hermes for exactly this purpose. In another it had a birth as strange as anything it carried. Poseidon had wanted a woman named Theophane and hidden her on a remote island, and when her suitors tracked her there, he turned her into a ewe and himself into a ram to throw them off. The golden-fleeced ram was the child of that disguise, born of a sea god and a transformed girl, which may explain why it could do far more than an ordinary animal.

It was large, with the heavy curl of horn that a frightened child could lock both hands around. Every fibre of its coat was gold, though the old poets could not agree on the exact shade. Some swore it was pure metal yellow, others that it shone purple like dye drawn from the sea, and at least one writer remembered it as white. It flew, in most versions on wings, holding a course no migrating flock could match. Stranger than any of this, it could talk. The sight of the ram speaking and the boy listening became a favourite scene for vase painters, who drew it so vividly that a viewer half expected to overhear the advice.

The flight was meant to save both children and saved only one. Somewhere over the strait between Sigeum and the long peninsula, Helle’s hands lost the wool. She went off the ram’s flank and into the water, and the narrow sea closed over her and took her name from that moment on, the Hellespont. Her brother twisted around and reached for her with both arms and caught nothing. He lost her in open water, and the ram did not turn back. It carried him on, past the mouth of the Black Sea, all the way to Colchis at the eastern rim of the world, where King Aeetes, a son of the sun, ruled a land most Greeks had only heard of.

What happened next the ram seems to have arranged itself. At its own suggestion, the stories say, Phrixus sacrificed it to Zeus the god of fugitives, the deity who shelters those in flight, and hung its fleece in a grove sacred to Ares, nailed to the branches of an oak. Aeetes welcomed the boy and gave him his daughter Chalciope. There is a gentler variant in which nothing has to die: the ram shrugs off its own golden coat, leaves it with Phrixus as a keepsake, and climbs into the sky of its own accord to become the constellation Aries, which is supposed to be why those particular stars burn so faintly. The blunter tradition is the more common one. The ram was born to be killed.

For a long time the fleece simply hung in the grove, brightening the dark leaves, while a sleepless serpent coiled around the trunk and Aeetes set guards and built a wall, because an oracle had told him his reign would last only as long as the skin remained. Generations passed before it mattered to anyone else. Then Pelias, wanting his nephew Jason out of the way, sent him to fetch the thing back, and the whole expedition of the Argo set out for it. At the end of that voyage Jason stood in the grove with the dragon charmed asleep by Medea’s drugs and lifted the fleece down at last. It threw a fiery glow across his face, heavy as the hide of a yearling heifer, and the ground in front of him went bright as he walked. The wool that had once warmed two children in the freezing upper air ended its life as a trophy, a dowry, and finally a blanket spread on a wedding bed.

Its powers were never really its own to use. It could fly without tiring, cross sea and sky on a true line, speak and counsel, and it wore a fleece of incorruptible gold that no amount of weather could dull. Against all of that, it could carry but it could not hold, and the one passenger it dropped was lost for good. The same brilliance that made it precious made it a target the instant it had a body to skin. Later writers who disliked talking rams tried to tidy the whole thing away. One claimed Krios, the Ram, was really a human servant of Phrixus, sacrificed and flayed, his name and his gilded skin doing the rest. Another pointed to the rivers of the Caucasus, where prospectors caught flakes of real gold in fleeces pegged across the current, and decided the legend had grown out of nothing more mysterious than that.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chrysomallus in Greek mythology?

Chrysomallus is the flying, golden-fleeced ram of Greek mythology, an immortal animal that could speak. It was sent by the cloud-nymph Nephele to rescue her children Phrixus and Helle from being sacrificed, and after it was killed its hide became the famous Golden Fleece. The ram was later placed among the stars as the constellation Aries.

Who did the golden ram rescue?

Chrysomallus rescued Phrixus and his sister Helle, two children their stepmother Ino had schemed to have sacrificed. The ram carried them through the air away from the altar, but Helle lost her grip and fell into the sea between Europe and Asia. That strait was named the Hellespont after her, while Phrixus rode on safely to Colchis.

What happened to Chrysomallus and its fleece?

At Colchis, Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus, the protector of fugitives, and hung its golden fleece in a grove sacred to Ares, where a sleepless dragon guarded it on an oak tree. Generations later, Jason and the Argonauts sailed to Colchis to take the fleece, which they seized after Medea drugged the dragon to sleep. In one gentler version the ram instead shed its own fleece and rose into the sky on its own.

Where did the golden ram come from?

The most detailed account makes Chrysomallus the offspring of the god Poseidon and a woman named Theophane, whom Poseidon had turned into a ewe while disguising himself as a ram. A different tradition simply says the ram was a gift given to Nephele by the god Hermes. The sources agree it was no ordinary animal, since it could fly, reason, and speak.

What constellation is Chrysomallus?

Chrysomallus became the constellation Aries, the Ram. After it carried Phrixus to safety and was sacrificed, the ram was set among the stars. One tradition explains that the constellation shines only faintly because the ram gave away its bright golden fleece before ascending to the sky.