There were three great gatherings in the age of heroes. The voyage of the Argo after the Golden Fleece. The war at Troy. And, between them, the Calydonian Hunt — where practically every famous name in Greece turned up in one place to kill one pig. It sounds almost comic when you put it like that. It isn't. This is one of the darkest stories in the collection, and the killing of the boar happens in the middle, not at the end. What comes afterwards involves an argument over a hide, a double murder, and a mother making a decision that I've never been able to read without stopping.
Why the Boar Came
Oeneus, king of Calydon in Aetolia, made his annual offerings to the gods after a good harvest. He forgot Artemis. That's the entire cause. Not an insult, not a challenge, not a boast — an oversight. Ovid says he simply skipped her altar. And that was enough. She sent a boar. Not a large boar. Something the size of a bull, with eyes full of blood and fire, bristles standing up like spear shafts, and tusks the size of an elephant's. It came down out of the hills and destroyed the country — crops flattened, vines torn up, orchards ruined, cattle killed in the fields, dogs and shepherds killed when they tried to stop it. Farmers abandoned their land and moved inside the city walls.
Peabody's dry aside is that the people soon wished they had never offended the goddess who keeps the woods clear of such monsters. Which is the xenia logic of Greek religion in one sentence: a goddess who is honoured protects you from exactly the thing she's now sending. Nothing ordinary worked. So Prince Meleager, the king's son, summoned the heroes.
The Prophecy About the Log
Before we get to the hunt, you need to know what Meleager's mother did the week he was born, because the ending is already set by it. Seven days after the birth, Queen Althaea woke — or, in Peabody's version, saw in a vision — and there were the three Fates at the hearth, spinning and muttering over their work. Clotho spins the thread of life. Lachesis draws it out and measures it. Atropos waits with the shears. And Althaea heard them say that her son would live exactly as long as a particular brand then burning on the hearth.
She was out of bed before she'd finished processing it. She snatched the log out of the fire, put out the flame, and hid it somewhere safe where nothing could ever touch it. So Meleager grew up strong and unkillable, and somewhere in the palace there was a piece of half-burnt wood in a box, and only one person in the world knew where.
She was out of bed before she'd finished processing it. Somewhere in the palace afterwards there was a half-burnt log in a box, and only one person knew where.
The Roll Call
The heroes who answered were the who's who of the generation. Many had sailed on the Argo: Jason, Theseus, Nestor (already known for being wise and later, at Troy, for being old), Castor and Pollux, Peleus — the future father of Achilles — and Meleager's two uncles, Phlexippus and Toxeus, brothers of Queen Althaea.
And one other. Atalanta, from Arcadia. Raised by a she-bear after being exposed as an infant, sworn to Artemis, the fastest human being alive, and by some distance the best archer present. She had rowed with the Argonauts. She was, as Peabody puts it, boyish in her boldness for wild sports, fleet of foot, and very lovely to look at. Meleager took one look at her and decided she was the woman he was going to marry. He was already married. This is not mentioned at the time, and it becomes relevant. Some of the men objected to hunting alongside a woman. Ovid says they were furious about it. Meleager overruled them, and that resentment sits in the background of everything that follows.
The Hunt
They stretched nets between the trees, let the dogs loose, and went into the marsh where the boar was lying up. It came out at them immediately, and the gathering of the greatest heroes in Greece performed extremely badly. Jason threw his spear and missed. Nestor saved his life by pole-vaulting into a tree, which is a real detail in Ovid and a wonderful one. Several men were gored before they could get clear. One hero was killed by the boar; another was killed by a spear thrown by a colleague in the confusion.
Then Atalanta shot. Her arrow went in behind the ear and drew the first blood anyone had managed. It was the turning point of the hunt. Meleager, delighted, shouted for the rest of them to follow up — and after one bad thrust, drove his own spear into the animal's side and killed it.
Her arrow went in behind the ear. The greatest heroes in Greece had all missed. She was the turning point of the hunt.
The Argument Over the Hide
Then he did the thing that destroyed everything. Custom said the hide belonged to whoever made the kill. He gave it to Atalanta, on the grounds that she had drawn first blood and it was hers by right. It was defensible. It was also — given that he was visibly in love with her, and that half the party had objected to her presence — never going to be accepted. His uncles Phlexippus and Toxeus snatched the trophy out of her hands, told her a woman had no claim on it, and said that if Meleager was going to give away what wasn't his, they'd take it back. Meleager killed them both. Ovid gives it about two lines. It's that fast.
And only when they were lying dead in front of him did he register what he'd actually done. They weren't rivals. They were his mother's brothers.
Althaea and the Fire
Meanwhile the news had reached the city that the boar was dead, and Althaea was on her way to the temple to give thanks for the deliverance. At the gates she came on a crowd around a litter, and pushed through it, and it was her two brothers. Then, in the same minute, she was told who had killed them.
Ovid stages what happens next as the longest and most agonising internal argument in the Metamorphoses, and it's a genuine masterpiece. She goes back and forth. She is a mother; she is a sister. She built this child; her brothers are owed. She reaches for the log and pulls her hand back. She has a pyre built and lit and then can't approach it. She holds the brand out over the flames — and takes it back. She says, in Peabody's compressed version, that she cannot bear that the honour of her house should require this. Then she covers her eyes and throws it in.
She cannot bear that the honour of her house should require this. Then she covers her eyes and throws it in.
What Happened to Meleager
Far away, still standing over the bodies with the heroes around him, Meleager felt something go through him. There was no wound. There was no enemy. He simply started burning from the inside, and nobody could see why, and there was nothing to fight. He was consumed as the log was consumed, in exact time with it. And with his last breath — this is the detail that finishes me — he blessed his friends, and his kindred, and Atalanta, and the mother who had brought him to this. He never knew what she'd done. He was blessing her. The brand fell into ash and in the forest the hero lay dead.
Althaea killed herself. Meleager's sisters mourned so continuously that Artemis, in a final act of what the Greeks called pity, turned them into birds — guineafowl, which the Greeks named meleagrides after him. The genus name Meleagris, which covers the turkey, still carries it. Atalanta walked out of it clean. She did the best work of anyone there, was denied her prize, watched three men die over it, and simply carried on.
What It's All About
A few things are running at once here, and they don't reduce to a single moral. Small negligence, vast consequence. A king forgets one altar. A country is devastated, a dozen heroes die, a prince kills his uncles, a queen kills her son and then herself. Greek myth is fascinated by disproportion, and this is its clearest case. The trophy problem. The hunt succeeds. Everyone survives the monster. Then they destroy themselves arguing about who gets credit. That's a story about collective achievement that could have been written about any committee in history. Fate you can hold in your hand. Most Greek prophecies are riddles you misread. Meleager's is a physical object, and his mother has it. She can look at it. She can pick it up. That doesn't help at all — it just means the thing that kills him is a decision rather than an accident.
Sources
Ovid, Metamorphoses Book 8 is the fullest and best account — Nestor in the tree, the catalogue of hunters, and Althaea's monologue all come from there. The oldest version is in Homer, Iliad Book 9, where Phoenix tells Meleager's story to Achilles as a warning about withdrawing from a fight in anger. Homer's version has no burning brand at all; Meleager dies in a war and his mother merely curses him. The brand appears later, in Bacchylides and elsewhere. Apollodorus preserves both versions side by side, which is useful and unusual. Josephine Preston Peabody's Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew (1897) tells it compactly and keeps the brand.
