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23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Thessaly
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northern plain
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Iolcus
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city - jason and the argonauts set forth
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Apollonius of Rhodes
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hellenistic taste for obscure adventures - best known story of jason
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Jason
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His name at first was Diomedes and he was reared by Chiron to escape Pelias who tried to kill anyone who might be a threat and changed his name to Jason. As a result of his kindness to the goddess Hera whom he carried across a river in flood when she visited earth in the guise of an old woman, he was granted the protection of the goddess in his later adventures. He claimed the throne of Iolcus from Pelias who had usurped it from Aeson and Pelias agreed to surrender it if Jason would lay the ghost of Phrixus which was haunting him and bring back the Golden Fleece to Iolcus. This initiated the quest for the Golden Fleece told in the story of the Argonauts
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Athamas
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King of Boeotia. Son of Aeolus and Enarete. Brother of Salmoneus and Sisyphus. Husband of Nephele or Themisto and Ino. He married Nephele, the woman Zeus had created in the likeness of Hera from cloud material to deceive Ixion. They had three children, Helle, Leucon and Phrixus. He was also the father of Learchus and Melicertes by Ino, whom he seduced and then married. Others say that Ino was his first wife. In other accounts Themisto was his first wife and mother of Helle, Leucon and Phrixus. He was preparing to sacrifice his son Phrixus to lift the scourge of famine when Heracles (or Hermes) arrived on a flying ram and stayed his hand. Both Phrixus and Helle were carried off on the golden-fleeced ram Chrysomallon. He and Ino reared the infant Dionysus and when Hera discovered the child's whereabouts she drove Athamas mad so that he killed his son, Learchus, with an arrow, mistaking him for a stag. His wife, Ino, and his other son, Melicertes, escaped his sword only by jumping into th
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Phrixus
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Son of Athamas and Nephele or Themisto. Brother of Helle. Husband of Chalciope. Father of Argeus, Cytisorus, Melanion and Phrontis. His father's second wife, Ino, wanted Phrixus out of the way so that her own son could inherit the throne of Boeotia so she sabotaged the harvest and arranged for a message from the Delphic Oracle to say that only the sacrifice of Phrixus would secure the lifting of the plague. In another story, his aunt Biadice fell in love with him and cried rape when he rejected her advances. For one or other of these reasons, he was offered in sacrifice to Apollo by his father but was saved by Hermes and carried off with his sister on the back of a huge flying ram with a golden fleece, known as Chrysomallon, but Helle fell off into the sea (afterwards called the Hellespont) and was drowned. Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus in gratitude for his escape. The fleece was hung off a tree in Colchis where it was guarded by a serpent that never slept and later became the sub
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Helle
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Daughter of Athamas and Nephele, Ino or Themisto. Sister of Phrixus. She and her brother were rescued from being sacrificed and carried away by Chrysallom, a flying ram with a golden fleece, but she got giddy, fell into the sea and was drowned in what became known as the Hellespont. Some stories allege she was saved from drowning by Poseidon, became a sea goddess and bore his son, Paeon or Edonus.
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Hellespont
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sea of helle
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Colchis
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city maybe near modern georgia
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Aeetes
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King of Colchis. Son of Helius and Perseis. Brother of Circe, Pasiphae and Perses. Husband of Asterodea and later Idyia. Father of Chalciope by Asterodea. Father of Apsyrtus and Medea by Idyia. When Phrixus was forced to flee from Iolcus to escape death on the altar he was carried off on a golden-fleeced ram. He was finally given shelter by King Aetes and, when Phrixus sacrified the ram to the gods, he gave the golden fleece to the king who hung it on a tree guarded by a dragon. He was still ruling in Colchis when Jason came to demand the golden fleece be returned to Iolcus. In some accounts he killed Phrixus. He was deposed by his brother, Perses, but later restored to the throne by Medea.
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Pelias
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King of Iolcus. Son of Poseidon and Tyro. Twin brother of Neleus. Husband of Anaxibia. Father of Acastus, Alcestis, Amphinone and Evadne. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus and, when he found out about her affair with Poseidon, he abandoned her and took her maid Sidero in her place. Tyro's twin sons by Poseidon were abandoned but they were found and reared by horse-herders. Sidero, when she married Cretheus, was very cruel to Tyro and when the twins were old enough they set out to avenge her with the result that Pelias killed Sidero. Another version says that Sidero was the second wife of Tyro's father, Salmoneus, and hence her stepmother. He later deposed Aeson and Polymele and took over the throne of Iolcus. When their son Jason later claimed the throne, he offered to give it up if Jason would fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis. While Jason was away, his parents committed suicide and Pelias killed their young son Promachus. Jason returned with the Golden Fleece bringing with him Medea,
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Chiron
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The king of the Centaurs. Son of Cronus and Philyra. Husband of Chariclo. Father of Endeis and Euippe. His parentage was different from that of the other Centaurs, as was his disposition. He was physically like them because Cronus had adopted the form of a horse when fathering him on Philyra, but he was a wise Centaur who cared for and tutored a number of Greek heroes including Achilles, Asclepius Heracles and Jason. He was inadvertently shot by Heracles, whose poisoned arrows were invariably fatal to mortals. An alternative story says that when Pholus entertained Heracles in his cave and they were attacked by other centaurs, one of them, Elatus, was wounded by one of the poisoned arrows fired by Heracles and Chiron was accidentally wounded in the knee when he withdrew this arrow. Chiron, not a mortal, could not die though suffering great agony. Later on Prometheus assumed the burden of immortality to allow Chiron to die, when he was placed in the heavens as Centaurus. He is sometimes
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Argo
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The ship of Jason. This 50-oared ship (some say 54-oared) was built by Argus for Jason and his men for their quest for the Golden Fleece. The prow, made from one of the talking oaks from Dodona and provided by Athena, acted as an oracle on the voyage. After the voyage, the ship was beached at Corinth where, years later, the rotting prow fell on the aged Jason and killed him. The rest of the hull was placed in the heavens by Poseidon. An entirely different version says that this was the ship used by Danaus to transport his fifty daughters when they fled from Egypt to escape from Aegyptus. This story says that they went to Rhodes; the original story says that they went to Argos where Danaus became king. Possibly there was confusion here between the ship and its destination.
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Boreads
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God of the north wind. Son of Aeolus, Astraeus or Strymon. By Eos. Husband of Oreithyia. Father of Chione, Cleopatra, H(a)emus and the twins Calais and Zetes. Failing to get the consent of her father Erechtheus to marry Orithyia, Boreas carried her off and married her. It is said that disguised as a stallion he mated with twelve of the mares of Erichthonius (or Poseidon) to produce twelve fillies that could run over the waves. When Pan fell in love with the nymph Pitis, Boreas became jealous and threw her to her death from a cliff. She was turned into a pine tree. Boreas is usually depicted as purplehaired with wings and a beard, blowing a conch shell
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Phineus
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King of Salmydessus. A prophet. Son of Agenor and Telephassa. Husband of Cleopatra and Idaea. Father of Pandion and Plexippus. By Cleopatra. Father of Maryandynus by Idaea. He married Cleopatra and, after her death, Idaea. She accused her two stepsons of attempted rape and Phineus blinded them. Another story says that he took Idaea as his wife, not after Cleopatra's death but after he had shut her away in a prison. She was freed by Calais and Zetes who put her sons on the throne in place of Phineus and sent Idaea back to her own people. He was blinded by the gods when he foretold the future too accurately for their liking or as punishment for maiming his sons and was harassed by the Harpies until Calais and Zetes chased them off. Some say that he was killed by Hercules
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Symplegades
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Rocks or islands at the entrance to the Black Sea. These rocks, regarded as living beings, the offspring of Gaea, moved towards one another threatening to smash passing ships. They finally became fixed in position after failing to smash the Argo on her voyage to Colchis.
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Medea
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A priestess of Hecate. Daughter of Aetes, king of Colchis,She fell in love with Jason when he arrived in Colchis to get the Golden Fleece and lulled the guardian dragon to sleep while Jason took the fleece from the tree where it had been hung, fleeing with him in the Argo. As a weddinggift, Medea sent her a crown and a robe which burst into flames when the bride put them on, killing her, her father and many of the guests. Jason was lucky to escape with his life. Zeus was greatly intrigued by her resourcefulness and fell in love with her but she rejected his advances. Hera who was always jealous of her husband's lovers was so grateful that she offered to make Medea's children immortal if she would offer them in sacrifice. Medea is said finally to have become immortal and to have ruled in the Elysian Fields
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Apsyrtus
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Son of Aetes and Idyia. Brother of Chalciope and Medea. When his sister Medea left Colchis with Jason after he had seized the Golden Fleece, Apsyrtus either went with her in the Argo or followed in one of the ships of the Colchian fleet, depending on who is telling the story. In the former tale, Medea killed him and threw pieces of his body overboard to delay the following ships, which stopped to collect the pieces. In the other story she induced Apsyrtus to come ashore where he was killed by Jason waiting in ambush.
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Talus
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bronze giant with a single vein of blood
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Aetolia
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?
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Calydon
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son of aetolus
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Meleager
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At his birth, the Fates decreed that when a piece of wood that they had thrown on to the fire was completely consumed, Meleager would die. His mother quickly doused the flames and hid the brand. He was one of the Argonauts and became a champion javelin-thrower. It was he who killed the Calydonian boar and presented the skin to Atalanta who had first wounded it. He killed his uncles Plexippus and Toxeus when they objected. Althaea was so angry that, during the battle that ensued when two other uncles led troops against him, she threw the hidden brand on the fire and, as it burnt away, her son died. In another story, he had killed his mother's brother and, when she cursed him for this deed, he refused to help Calydon when it was attacked by the Curetes. He later relented to the pleas of his wife and joined the fray. Some say that he was killed in the struggle with the Curetes and his grieving sisters (whose tears turned into amber, in some accounts) were changed into guinea-fowl and his
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Atalanta
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Atalanta was raised by a she-bear and grew up as a very fleetfooted maiden. She joined the hunt for the Calydonian boar and shot and killed the centaurs Hylaeus and Rhoecus when they tried to rape her. She wounded the boar so that Meleager was able to get close and kill it. Meleager insisted that she be given the pelt of the boar, a gesture which brought much trouble on his own head. She would marry only the man who could beat her in a foot-race, killing all who tried and failed. Melanion eventually beat her by dropping golden apples, given to him by Aphrodite, in her path, which delayed her as she stopped to pick them up. Some say that she sailed with the Argonauts, the only woman in the crew. She and her husband were changed into lions or leopards by Zeus for defiling his precinct or, in some versions, by Aphrodite for failing to give thanks to the goddess. Some say that after giving birth to Parthenopaeus, her son by Artes, she was taken up to Olympus
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