Aries: the Golden Fleece and the point where the zodiac begins
Phrixus, Helle and the ram with the golden fleece: the Greek myth behind the first zodiac sign, its Babylonian roots and the First Point of Aries.
The first sign of the Western zodiac bears the name of an animal that, in Greek myth, saves two children and leaves on earth the most coveted relic of antiquity. Aries is a modest constellation in brightness, yet for centuries it played an enormous role in the celestial calendar: it was the region of the sky where the Sun stood at the spring equinox, the point from which ancient astronomers began measuring the year.
Phrixus, Helle and the golden ram
The myth tells that Athamas, king of Orchomenus in Boeotia, had two children, Phrixus and Helle, by the cloud goddess Nephele. The king's second wife, Ino, devised a trick: she had the seed grain roasted so that the harvest would fail, then bribed the messengers sent to Delphi, who reported that the only remedy was the sacrifice of Phrixus. Before the knife fell, Nephele sent to the rescue a ram with a golden fleece, a gift of Hermes, able to fly.
The two siblings climbed onto the animal's back and crossed the sea towards the east. During the flight Helle lost her grip and fell into the strait that took its name from her, the Hellespont, today's Dardanelles. Phrixus instead reached Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, at the court of King Aeetes. There he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the fleece to the king, who hung it in a grove sacred to Ares, guarded by a sleepless dragon.
From the Argonauts to the stars
The Golden Fleece thus becomes the driving force of the Argonauts' expedition: Jason, to regain the throne of Iolcus usurped by his uncle Pelias, must recover it, and he succeeds thanks to Medea, daughter of Aeetes. The fullest account that has reached us is the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, a poem of the third century BC. According to the tradition gathered by the mythographers, Zeus placed the ram among the constellations in memory of its service.
Ancient authors noted that the celestial Ram is a faint figure, almost without prominent stars. The brightest, Hamal, bears an Arabic name that simply means “the lamb” or “the ram”. Aratus of Soli, in his Phaenomena, suggests finding it by means of nearby Andromeda. Iconography often shows it crouching, its head turned back towards Taurus, as if it were still looking at the road it had travelled.
The First Point of Aries and precession
Long before the Greeks, Babylonian astronomical tablets called this area of the sky by a name meaning “the hired man”, that is, the farm labourer; only later was the figure read as a ram. When the zodiac of twelve equal signs took shape, the Sun at the spring equinox stood among these stars, and the sign was placed at the head of the series. Astronomers still call the intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator the “First Point of Aries”.
Hipparchus of Nicaea, in the second century BC, realised that this point moves slowly against the fixed stars: this is the precession of the equinoxes, a motion that completes a full cycle in about 26,000 years. Because of it, the spring equinox now falls in the constellation of Pisces, while the astrological sign keeps the name of Aries. The modern distinction between signs and constellations arises precisely from this.
Aries therefore weaves together two stories. On one side there is the myth of the averted sacrifice and the flight to Colchis, with its trail of heroes and betrayals; on the other there is a history of measurements, calendars and slow shifts in the sky. In traditional symbolism the sign has been associated with beginnings, with impulse and with the fire of the new season, values that derive largely from its opening position in the round of the zodiac.