Meleager

Apollodorus's Library makes Meleager the son of Oeneus, king of Calydon, and Althaea, daughter of Thestius. It adds that some said Ares fathered him. When the baby was seven days old, the Fates declared that he would die when the brand burning on the hearth burned out. Althaea snatched up the brand and hid it in a chest. Hyginus's Fabulae names the three Fates. Clotho said he would be noble, Lachesis brave, and Atropos tied his life to the brand.

The trouble began with a sacrifice. Oeneus offered first fruits to every god but forgot Artemis. Homer's Iliad says he either forgot or did not notice, and was greatly blinded in heart. The goddess sent a huge boar to ravage Calydon. Apollodorus says Meleager grew up invulnerable and gallant, and that he killed the beast with a stab in the flank. The hunt itself, and Atalanta's part in it, is told on her own page.

In Apollodorus, the prize caused his death. Meleager gave the boar's skin to Atalanta. Her later footrace is told in Atalanta and the Race. His uncles, the sons of Thestius, took it from her, scorning that a woman should win it. Meleager killed them in a rage and gave it back. Althaea, grieving for her brothers, kindled the brand, and he died at once. Ovid's Metamorphoses turns the moment into a long struggle. Four times Althaea lifts the brand to the flames, and four times she holds back.

Homer's Iliad tells an older story with no brand at all. In Book 9, old Phoenix tells it to Achilles as a warning. After the hunt, the Curetes and the Aetolians fought over the boar's head and hide. While Meleager fought, the Curetes could not hold the field. Then his mother, grieving for her brother, beat the earth and called on Hades and Persephone to kill her son. The Erinys that walks in darkness heard her from Erebus.

Meleager withdrew to lie beside his wife Cleopatra, nursing his anger. The elders offered him fifty acres of the best land in Calydon. His father, sisters, mother and closest friends all begged him. He refused until the Curetes were on the walls and firing the city. Only Cleopatra moved him, by listing what happens to the people of a captured city. He armed and saved the Aetolians, but they never paid him the gifts. Phoenix's lesson for Achilles is plain: accept the gifts while they are offered.

Bacchylides's fifth Ode meets Meleager in the underworld. When Heracles went down for Cerberus, he saw Meleager's shade shining in armour and drew his bow. Meleager calmed him and told his story. In the war with the Curetes over the hide, he killed his mother's brothers, Iphiclus and Aphares. Althaea took the log of his doom from its chest and burned it. His strength failed while he fought before the towers and the enemy fled toward Pleuron.

In the same Ode, Heracles wept, they say for the only time in his life. Then he asked whether Oeneus had a daughter who looked like Meleager, because he would gladly marry her. Meleager named his sister Deianira, still untouched by love. Apollodorus's Library later says that Heracles came to Calydon and wooed Deianira, daughter of Oeneus. Apollodorus also says that when the souls of the dead saw Heracles, all fled except Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa.

Apollodorus's Library lists Meleager, son of Oeneus, among the heroes who sailed with Jason on the Argo. The same catalogue names Atalanta. The site's Argonauts page covers the crew lists and where they disagree.

Pausanias describes Meleager as he appears in an ancient painting. There he sets out the rival accounts of his death. He reads Homer as saying that the Fury heard Althaea's curses and so caused Meleager's death. He adds that the Eoeae and the Minyad disagree. In those poems Apollo helped the Curetes against the Aetolians and killed Meleager himself.

Pausanias also dates the brand. He says Phrynichus first put it on the stage, in his Pleuronian Women. Phrynichus did not invent it, Pausanias adds, but only touched on a story already told everywhere in Greece. Apollodorus reports one more version. The sons of Thestius claimed Iphiclus had hit the boar first, and war broke out. Meleager killed the rest of his uncles and then fell fighting himself.

The women of his house did not survive him. Apollodorus says Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselves, and the women who mourned him became birds. In Ovid, Althaea stabs herself, and Latona's daughter turns his weeping sisters into birds, all but Gorge and Deianira. Hyginus calls the birds meleagrides, guinea hens. He names Meleager's wife Alcyone and says she died of grief. Homer had already said that Cleopatra's parents called her Alcyone.