King Athamas divorced his first wife to marry another. His second wife was ambitious for her own children and devised a way to get rid of Athamas' children by his previous wife. She arranged a famine that could only be alleviated by the death of her stepchildren. As these children were about to be sacrificed Hermes sent a golden ram to rescue them. This divine ram saved the boy Phrixus and his sister Helle and flew north with them. Helle lost her grip and fell into a body of water that was named the Hellespont after her. The ram delivered Phrixus to Colchis, where the boy was taken in by King Aeetes. In thanksgiving for his deliverance Phrixus killed the golden ram as a sacrifice to Zeus, and its fleece was hung in a sacred grove.
Now the kingdom that Jason was supposed to inherit had been usurped by his cousin Pelias, and Jason was raised in secrecy for his own protection. Pelias had learned from an oracle that he himself would die because of a kinsman, and that he must beware of any stranger wearing a single sandal. When Jason arrived to claim rulership he wore but one sandal. A handsome, ambitious young man, Jason boldly confronted King Pelias and offered to let him have the wealth Pelias had accumulated, but that he, Jason, would take over the kingship. Pelias agreed but demanded that Jason fetch the Golden Fleece from far-off Colchis, thinking that the brash young man would never return.
Jason, consented to Pelias' condition and commissioned a ship, the Argo, to be built. He sent word to every court in Greece that he wanted volunteers, a band of Argonauts, to accompany him on his adventure. The journey would take them past Troy, up the Hellespont, through the Bosphorus, and all the way to the eastern shores of the Black Sea, where Colchis was located.
