Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/140

 126 GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY and rescue of Phrixus may have originated in the wor- ship of Zeus Laphystios, where for the sacrifice of a human being that of a ram may have been afterwards substituted, a process such as may lie at the foundation of the legend of Iphigenia. The story relating to Helle was perhaps added only to explain the name Hellespont. 164. The Medea myth and the further development of the expedition of the Argonauts is of Corinthian origin ; for their goal is designated as the eastern land Colchis, well known to the Corinthian navigators. More- over, Aeetes, the son of Helios and Persa, while he is a personality that surely originated in an epithet of the sun god, is generally considered to have been a ruler of Corinth, on whose citadel, Ephyra or Acrocorinth, Helios himself had one of the chief seats of his worship, and afterwards to have emigrated to Colchis. When Jason demanded from him the golden fleece, Aeetes declared himself ready to comply if he would first yoke two fire- breathing bulls with brazen feet and with them plow the field of Ares. Medea, who was inflamed with love for the stranger, protected him from the effect of the fire by a magic ointment, and helped him to overpower the dragon which was guarding the fleece. 165. Then with the Argonauts she embarked in the ship, at the same time carrying off her young brother Apsyrtus. When pursued by Aeetes, she killed the boy and flung his limbs one by one into the sea, that her father might be retarded by the search for them. After an adventurous voyage, which later forms of the legend, with the widening of geographical knowledge toward the north and west, constantly extended further, they reached Corinth (or returned to lolcus), where they