Terracotta Plaque With Phrixos on the Ram in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2007

Terracotta plaque
Greek, Melian, ca. 450 BC
Phrixos carried over the sea by a ram

Accession # 12.229.20

Phrixos and his sister, Helle, were threatened with death by their stepmother, the wife of King Athamas, who ruled part of Thessaly. They escaped thanks to a ram with a golden fleece. It was carrying them to Kolchis, the region east of the Black Sea, where Helle drowned in the straights connecting the Sea of Mamara with the Aegean Sea; the straits, therefore, became known as the Hellespont. This fine relief plaque shows Phrixos alongside the ram and holding its horns, as fish cavort in the sea below.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.