Terracotta plaque
Phrixos carried over the sea by a ram
Phrixos and his sister, Helle, were threatened with death by their stepmother, the wife of King Athamas who ruled part of Thessaly. They escaped thanks to a ram with a golden fleece. It was carrying them to Kolchis, the region east of the Black Sea, when Helle drowned in the straits connecting the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea; the straits became known as the Hellespont. This fine relief plaque shows Phrixos alongside the ram and holding its horns, as fish cavort in the sea below.
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