Nephele
In Greek mythology, Nephele is the cloud-named wife of King Athamas and mother of Phrixus and Helle, who saves her children from sacrifice by sending them across the sea on a ram with a golden fleece.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Greek mythology
- Region
- Greece (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Kindly Watchers
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Cloud is Cloud denotes divine presence and concealment, rain, fertility, compassion, and prosperity; narratives may personify it as a mother or oppose it as a water-stealing storm.
why
In Greek mythology, Nephele is the cloud-named wife of King Athamas and mother of Phrixus and Helle, who saves her children from sacrifice by sending them across the sea on a ram with a golden fleece.
- Mist is Mist denotes divine concealment, fertility, primordial confusion, and the initiate’s passage toward illumination; Māori cosmology also places it among storm-born waters.
why
Her name is associated with clouds, and later interpreters connect her to a broader pattern in Greek myth of cloud-formed women, most famously the cloud-phantom created by Zeus in the story of Ixion, though sources do not always draw a direct line between that cloud-woman and Athamas's wife Nephele beyond the shared name and association with cloud and mist.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Defensive powers
- Guardian intervention
why
Athamas, pressured by his people, brings his son to the altar, but accounts agree that Nephele intervenes at the critical moment, snatching up both Phrixus and Helle and providing them with a ram bearing a fleece of gold, a gift she is said to have received from Hermes, which carries the two children through the sky to escape the sacrifice and the famine alike.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Death meets
3 citations
- Apollodorus, translated by J. G. Frazer, The Library, p. 251.
- Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. 616.
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth, p. 176.
- Father meets
3 citations
- Apollodorus, translated by J. G. Frazer, The Library, p. 251.
- Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. 616.
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth, p. 176.
- Hero meets
3 citations
- Apollodorus, translated by J. G. Frazer, The Library, p. 251.
- Hesiod, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, p. 616.
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth, p. 176.