The Calydonian Boar

OENEUS, King of Calydon in Aetolia, married Althaea. She first bore him Toxeus, whom Oeneus killed with his own hands for rudely leaping over the fosse which had been dug in defence of the city; and then Meleager, said to have been, in reality, her son by Ares. When Meleager was seven days old, the Fates came to Althaea’s bedroom am announced that he could live only so long as a certain brand on the hearth remained unburned. She at once snatched the brand from the fire, extinguishing it with a pitcherful of water, and then hid it in a chest.
b. Meleager grew up to be a bold and invulnerable fighter, and the best javelin-thrower in Greece, as he proved at Acastus’s funeral games. He might still be alive but for an indiscretion committed by Oeneus who, one summer, forgot to include Artemis in his yearly sacrifices to the twelve gods of Olympus. Artemis, when informed of this neglect by Helius, sent a huge boar to kill Oeneus’s cattle and labourers, and to ravage his crops; but Oeneus despatched heralds, inviting all the bravest fighters of Greece to hunt the boar, and promising that whoever killed it should have its pelt and tusks.

c. Many answered the call, among them Castor and Polydeuces from Sparta; Idas and Lynceus from Messene; Theseus from Athens and Peirithous from Larissa; Jason from Iolcus and Admetus from Pherae; Nestor from Pylus; Peleus and Eurytion from Phthia; Iphicles  from Thebes; Amphiaraus from Argos; Telamon from Salamis; Caeneus from Magnesia; and finally Ancaeus and Cepheus from Arcadia, followed by their compatriot, the chaste, swift- footed Atalanta, only daughter of Iasus and Clymene. Iasus had wished for a male heir and Atalanta’s birth disappointed him so cruelly that he exposed her on the Parthenian Hill near Calydon, where she was suckled by a bear which Artemis sent to her aid. Atalanta grew to womanhood among a clan of hunters who found and reared her, but remained a virgin, and always carried arms. On one occasion she came fainting from thirst to Cyphanta and there, calling on Artemis, and striking a rock with the point of her spear, made a spring of water gush out. But she was not yet reconciled to her father.
d. Oeneus entertained the huntsmen royally for nine days; and though Ancaeus and Cepheus at first refused to hunt in company with a woman, Meleager declared, on Oeneus’s behalf, that unless they withdrew their objection he would cancel the chase altogether. The truth was that Meleager had married Idas’s daughter Cleopatra, but now felt a sudden love for Atalanta and wished to ingratiate himself with her. His uncles, Althaea’s brothers, took an immediate dislike to the girl, convinced that her presence could lead only to mischief, because he kept sighing deeply and exclaiming: ‘Ah, how happy the man whom she marries her’ Thus the chase began under bad auspices; Artemis herself had seen to this.
e. Amphiaraus and Atalanta were armed with bows and arrows; others with boar-spears, javelins, or axes, each being so anxious to win the pelt for himself that hunt discipline was neglected. At Meleager’s, suggestion, the company advanced in a half-moon, at some paces interval, through the forest where the boar had its lair.
f. The first blood shed was human. When Atalanta posted herself on the extreme right flank at some distance from her fellow-hunters, two Centaurs, Hylaeus and Rhaecus, who had joined the chase, decided to ravish her, each in turn assisting the other. But as soon as they ran towards her, she shot them both down and went to hunt at Meleager’s side.

g. Presently the boar was flushed from a water-course overgrown with willows. It came bounding out, killed two of the hunters, hamstrung another, and drove young Nestor, who afterwards fought at Troy, up a tree. Jason and several others flung ill-aimed javelins at the boar, Iphicles alone contriving to graze its shoulder. Then Telamon and Peleus went in boldly with boar-spears; but Telamon tripped over a tree root and, while Peleus was pulling him to his feet, the boar saw them and charged. Atalanta let fly a timely arrow, which sank in behind the ear, and sent it scurrying off. Ancaeus sneered: ‘That is no way to hunt! Watch me!’ He swung his battle-axe at the boar as it charged, but was not quick enough; the next instant he lay castrated and disembowelled. In his excitement, Peleus killed Eurytion with a javelin aimed at the boar, which Amphiaraus had succeeded in blinding with an arrow. Next, it rushed at Theseus, whose javelin flew wide; but Meleager also flung and transfixed its right flank, and then, as the boar whirled around in pain, trying to dislodge the missile, drove his hunting-spear deep under its left shoulder-blade to the heart. The boar fell dead at last. At once, Meleager flayed it, and presented the pelt to Atalanta, saying: ‘You drew first blood, and had we left the beast alone it would soon have succumbed to your arrow.’
b. His uncles were deeply offended. The eldest, Plexippus, argued that Meleager had won the pelt himself and that, on his refusal, it should have gone to the most honourable person present-namely himself, as Oeneus’s brother-in-law. Plexippus’s younger brother supported him with the contention that Iphicles, not Atalanta, had drawn first blood. Meleager, in a lover’s rage, killed them both.
i. Althaea, as she watched the dead bodies being carried home, set a curse upon Meleager; which prevented him from defending Calydon when his two surviving uncles declared war on the city and killed many of its defenders. At last his wife Cleopatra persuaded him to take up arms, and he killed both these uncles, despite their support by Apollo; whereupon the Furies instructed Althaea to take the unburned brand from the chest and cast it on the fire. Meleager felt a sudden scorching of his inwards, and the enemy overcame him with ease. Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselves, and Artemis turned all but two of Meleager’s shrieking sisters into guinea-hens, which she brought to her island of Leros, the home of evil-livers.
j. Delighted by Atalanta’s success, Iasus recognized her at last as his daughter; but when she arrived at the palace his first words were: ‘My child, prepare to take a husband!’-a disagreeable announcement, since the Delphic Oracle had warned her against marriage. She answered: ‘Father, I consent on one condition. Any suitor for my hand must either beat me in a foot race, or else let me kill him.’ ‘So be it,’ said Iasus.
k. Many unfortunate princes lost their lives in consequence, because she was the swiftest mortal alive; but Melanion, a son of Amphidamas the Arcadian, invoked Aphrodite’s assistance. She gave him three golden apples, saying: ‘Delay Atalanta by letting these fall, one after the other, in the course of the race.’ The stratagem was successful. Atalanta stooped to pick up each apple in turn and reached the winning-post just behind Melanion.

l. The marriage took place, but the Oracle’s warning was justified because, one day, as they passed by a precinct of Zeus, Melanion persuaded Atalanta to come inside and lie with him there. Vexed that his precinct had been defiled, Zeus changed them both into lions: for lions do not mate with lions, but only with leopards, and they were thus prevented from ever again enjoying each other. This was Aphrodite’s punishment first for Atalanta’s obstinacy in remaining a virgin, and then for her lack of gratitude in the matter of the golden apples. But some say that before this Atalanta had been untrue to Melanion and borne Meleager a child called Parthenopaeus, whom she exposed on the same hill where the she-bear had suckled her. He too survived and afterwards defeated Idas in Ionia and marched with the Seven  Champions against Thebes. According to others, Ares, not Meleager, was Parthenopaeus’s father; Atalanta’s husband was not Melanion but Hippomenes; and she was the daughter of Schoeneus, who ruled Boeotian Onchestus. It is added that she and he prophaned a sanctuary not of Zeus but of Cybele, who turned them into lions and yoked them to her chariot.

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1. Greek physicians credited the marshmallow (althaia, from althainein, ‘to cure’) with healing virtue and, being the first spring flower from which bees suck honey, it had much the same mythic importance as ivy-blossom, the last. The Calydonian hunt is heroic saga, based perhaps on a famous boar hunt, and on an Aetolian clan feud occasioned by it. But the sacred king’s death at the onset of a boar-whose curved tusks dedicated it to the moon-is ancient myth, and explains the introduction into the story of heroes from several different Greek  states who had suffered this fate. The boar was peculiarly the emblem of Calydon, and sacred to Ares, Meleager’s reputed father.
2. Toxeus’s leap over the fosse is paralleled by Remus’s leap over Romulus’s wall; it suggests the widespread custom of sacrificing a royal prince at the foundation of a city (I Kings). Meleager’s brand recalls several Celtic myths: a hero’s death taking place when some external object-a fruit, a tree, or an animal-is destroyed.

3. Artemis was worshipped as a meleagris, or guinea-hen, in the island of Leros, and on the Athenian Acropolis; the cult is of East African origin, to judge from this particular variety of guinea-fowl-which had a blue wattle, as opposed to the red-wattled Italian bird  introduced from Numidia-and its queer cluckings were taken to be sounds of mourning. Devotees of neither Artemis nor Isis might eat guinea-fowl. The Lerians’ reputation for evil- living may have been due to their religious conservatism, like the Cretans’ reputation for lying.
4. She-bears were sacred to Artemis, and Atalanta’s race against Melanion is probably deduced from an icon which showed the doomed king, with the golden apples in his hand, being chased to death by the goddess. A companion icon will have shown an image of  Artemis supported by two lions, as on the gate at Mycenae, and on several Mycenaean and Cretan seals. The second version of the myth seems to be the older, if only because Schoeneus, Atalanta’s father, stands for Schoenis, a title of Aphrodite’s; and because Zeus does not figure in it.
5. Why the lovers were punished-here the mythographers mistakenly refer to Pliny, though Pliny says, on the contrary, that lions vigorously punish lionesses for mating with leopards (Natural History)-is a problem of greater interest than Sir James Frazer in his notes on Apollodorus allows. It seems to record an old exogamic ruling, according to which members of the same totem clan could not marry one another, nor could lion clansmen marry into the leopard clan, which belonged to the same sub-phratry; as the lamb and goat clans could not intermarry at Athens.
6. Oeneus was not the only Hellenic king who withheld a sacrifice from Artemis. Her demands were much more severe than those of other Olympian deities, and even in Classical times included holocausts of living animals. These Oeneus will hardly have denied her; but the Arcadian and Boeotian practice was to sacrifice the king himself, or a surrogate, as the Actaeon stag; and Oeneus may well have refused to be torn in pieces.