st unhappy. She had to live as a servant, and
her children were servants to the servants of the palace. They were
clad in rags and had little to eat, and they were beaten often by the
servants who wished to win the favor of the new queen.

"But although they wore rags and had menial tasks to do, Phrixus and
Helle looked the children of a queen. The boy was tall, and in his eyes
there often came the flash of power, and the girl looked as if she
would grow into a lovely maiden. And when Athamas, their father, would
meet them by chance he would sigh, and Queen Ino would know by that
sigh that he had still some love for them in his heart. Afterward she
would have to use all the power she possessed to win the king back from
thinking upon his children.

"And now Queen Ino had children of her own. She knew that the people
reverenced the children of Nephele and cared nothing for her children.
And because she knew this she feared that when Athamas died Phrixus and
Helle, the children of Nephele, would be brought to rule in Thebes.
Then she and her children would be made to change places with them.

"This made Queen Ino think on ways by which she could make Phrixus and
Helle lose their lives. She thought long upon this, and at last a
desperate plan came into her mind.

"When it was winter she went amongst the women of the countryside, and
she gave them jewels and clothes for presents. Then she asked them to
do secretly an unheard-of thing. She asked the women to roast over
their fires the grains that had been left for seed. This the women did.
Then spring came on, and the men sowed in the fields the grain that had
been roasted over the fires. No shoots grew up as the spring went by.
In summer there was no waving greenness in the fields. Autumn came, and
there was no grain for the reaping. Then the men, not knowing what had
happened, went to King Athamas and told him that there would be famine
in the land.

"The king sent to the temple of Artemis to ask how the people might be
saved from the famine. And the guardians of the temple, having taken
gold from Queen Ino, told them that there would be worse and worse
famine and that all the people of Thebes would die of hunger unless the
king was willing to make a great sacrifice.

"When the king asked what sacrifice he should make he was told by the
guardians of the temple that he must sacrifice to the goddess his two
children, Phrixus and Helle. Those who were around the king, to