Atalanta

Apollodorus's Library tells Atalanta's early life in one passage. Her father exposed her at birth because he wanted sons. A she-bear came often and suckled her, until hunters found her and raised her among themselves. Grown up, she kept herself a virgin and lived armed in the wilds. Two centaurs, Rhoecus and Hylaeus, tried to rape her, and she shot them both dead.

Callimachus's Hymn to Artemis gives her a divine patron. Artemis, the poet says, praised swift-footed Atalanta, the slayer of boars, and taught her to hunt with dogs and shoot well. He adds that the Arcadians still kept the tusks of the Calydonian boar, and that the blood of Hylaeus and Rhoecus once ran on Mount Maenalus.

The Calydonian hunt is her best-known exploit. Apollodorus says King Oeneus forgot Artemis in his harvest sacrifice, and the goddess sent a huge boar to ravage Calydon. Oeneus summoned the best men of Greece, Theseus, Jason and Peleus among them. Some refused to hunt beside a woman, but Meleager, the king's son, made them. Atalanta shot the boar first, in the back. Amphiaraus hit it in the eye, and Meleager killed it and gave her the skin.

The gift caused a killing. In Apollodorus, the sons of Thestius, Meleager's uncles, took the skin from her, scorning that a woman should win it. Meleager killed them and gave it back. His mother Althaea, grieving for her brothers, burned the log on which his life depended, and he died. Ovid's Metamorphoses tells the same hunt at length. Meleager falls in love with her the moment he sees her.

Her second famous story is the race. Apollodorus says that once she found her parents, her father pressed her to marry. She set up a racecourse, gave each suitor a head start, and ran after him armed. A suitor she caught died on the spot; one she did not catch would marry her. Many died. Then Melanion ran, carrying golden apples from Aphrodite. He dropped them as she chased him, and she stopped to pick them up and lost.

Apollodorus ends briefly. Once, out hunting, the couple entered a precinct of Zeus and made love there, and they were turned into lions. He adds that Atalanta had a son, Parthenopaeus, by Melanion or by Ares. Parthenopaeus later marched in the Seven against Thebes.

Ovid's Metamorphoses gives the fullest race, and Venus tells it to Adonis. An oracle warns Atalanta that a husband will be her harm and that she will lose herself while still alive. She lives unwed in the woods and makes the race her condition. Her challenger here is Hippomenes, great-grandson of Neptune. She half wishes he would win, and she loves him without knowing it.

In Ovid, Hippomenes prays to Venus, who brings him three golden apples from a tree in the field of Tamasus on Cyprus. He throws them one at a time, and the third makes her swerve off the course. He wins but forgets to thank the goddess. Venus fills him with desire as they pass a temple of the Mother of the Gods, and they lie together in a sacred cave there. The tower-crowned Mother, Cybele, turns them into lions and yokes them to her chariot.

Hyginus's Fabulae mixes the two versions. His Atalanta is the daughter of Schoeneus, and her husband is Hippomenes with Venus's apples, as in Ovid. His race is harsher: the suitor ran unarmed and she chased him with a weapon, then set the losers' heads up in the stadium. The couple sin in a shrine of Jupiter the Victor on Mount Parnassus, and Jupiter makes them lion and lioness, animals the gods deny love.

Her place among the Argonauts is disputed. Apollodorus lists Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, in the crew of the Argo. Apollonius of Rhodes says the opposite. In his Argonautica, Jason holds a spear she gave him as a guest-gift in Maenalus. She wanted to join the voyage, but he kept her back himself, fearing strife on account of love. The site's Argonauts page covers the crew lists.

Arcadia kept her memory in stone. Pausanias says the Tegeans claimed that Atalanta hit the boar first and received its head and hide as the prize for valor. The front gable of Athena Alea's temple at Tegea showed the hunt, with Atalanta beside Meleager, Theseus and Peleus. Near a place called Schoenus, Pausanias saw race-courses named after her. On the chest of Cypselus at Olympia he saw her holding a young deer beside Melanion.