AthAmAs

Greek One of the sons of Aeolus; brother of Sisyphus and Salmoneus; king of Orchomenus in Boeotia. With Nephele he had two sons, Phrixus and Leucon, and a daughter, Helle. Athamas tired of the phantomlike Nephele and took Ino, daughter of Cadmus, to be his second wife. It was this marriage and the subsequent flight of Phrixus and Helle that brought about (a generation later) Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, for the two youngsters had fled from Boeotia on the back of a winged ram that bore a Golden Fleece. Athamas and Ino looked after the infant Dionysus, son of Zeus and Semele. For this they earned the gratitude of Zeus but also the wrath of his wife, Hera, who visited madness upon Athamas and Ino. Athamas and Ino had two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. In a fit of madness, Athamas killed Learchus and ate his still-warm flesh. Stricken with grief, Athamas left his kingdom and wandered from country to country. After many years, he founded a city called Alos, in Epirus, an ancient country of Greece, on the Ionian Sea. The conflict between the two wives of Athamas, Nephele (made by Zeus in the likeness of Hera) and Ino, may represent the conflict between early Ionian farmers (who worshiped the corn goddess) and later Aeolian invaders, who reared sheep and worshiped the thunder god Aeolus, represented by the cloudlike Nephele.