Meleager

Meleager was a hero of Calydon in Aetolia, the son of King Oeneus and Althaea, and the leader of the hunt for the Calydonian boar. Seven days after his birth the Fates declared that he would live only until a brand burning on the hearth was consumed. His mother hid the brand, and he was killed after he fought his mother’s brothers over the boar’s hide (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2).

Birth and the Brand

Meleager was the son of Althaea, daughter of Thestius, and of Oeneus, king of Calydon, “though they say that he was begotten by Ares” (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2). When he was seven days old the Fates came and declared that he should die when the brand burning on the hearth was burnt out. Althaea snatched up the brand and put it away in a chest. He grew up an invulnerable and gallant man (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2). Homer does not mention the brand; in the Iliad his death is the work of his mother’s curse (Iliad 9.566–572).

Meleager the Argonaut

Apollonius lists Meleager among the Argonauts who set out with Jason, and calls him still a youth (kourizon) among the heroes; he says he thinks no one except Heracles would have surpassed him had he stayed another year among the Aetolians. His mother’s brother Iphiclus and Oeneus’ brother Laocoon went with him (Apollonius, Argonautica 1.190–201). Apollonius does not have him fight Aeetes.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt

Oeneus forgot Artemis alone when he sacrificed the first fruits of the year to the gods. In anger she sent a huge boar that ravaged the fields and killed cattle and people (Homer, Iliad 9.533–542; Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2). Oeneus called together the best men of Greece and promised the skin to whoever killed the boar. Apollodorus names among them Castor and Pollux, Theseus, Idas and Lynceus, Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Admetus, Amphiaraus, Atalanta, and the sons of Thestius. After nine days of feasting Cepheus, Ancaeus and some others refused to hunt with a woman; Meleager forced them to take Atalanta along, because he wanted to have a child by her, though he was married to Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa. Hyleus and Ancaeus were killed by the boar. Atalanta shot it first in the back, Amphiaraus hit it in the eye, and Meleager killed it with a thrust in the flank. He gave the skin to Atalanta (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.2). In Ovid, Atalanta’s arrow draws the boar’s first blood, and after the kill Meleager gives her the hide and the head with its great tusks, to share his glory with her (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.380–387, 425–430). At Tegea, Pausanias saw the hide of the boar in the temple of Athena, rotted with age, and the hunt on the front gable of the temple, with Atalanta, Meleager and the sons of Thestius (Pausanias 8.45.6, 8.47.2).

The Death of Meleager

The sources give two main versions of his death.

The Brand

The sons of Thestius, who were Althaea’s brothers, resented that a woman should have the prize and took the skin from Atalanta, saying it was theirs by right of birth if Meleager did not want it. Meleager killed them in a rage and gave the skin back to Atalanta. Althaea grieved for her brothers, kindled the brand, and Meleager died at once (Apollodorus, Library 1.8.3). In Ovid, the brothers are Plexippus and Toxeus; Althaea is carrying offerings to the temples for her son’s victory when their bodies are brought in. She throws the brand into the fire, and Meleager, far away and unaware, feels himself burn from within and dies, lamenting that his death is without a wound. Althaea kills herself with a sword, and his sisters mourn until Artemis turns them into birds, all except Gorge and Deianira (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.425–546). Apollodorus too says that the women who mourned him became birds, and that Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselves (Library 1.8.3).

War with the Curetes and the Curse

In Homer there is no brand. The Curetes and Aetolians fight around Calydon over the head and hide of the boar. While Meleager fights, the Curetes cannot hold out in the field. But Meleager, angry with his mother, withdraws and lies beside his wife Cleopatra. His mother, grieving for her brother’s killing, has prayed to Hades and Persephone that her son be given death, and the Erinys has heard her. When the Curetes are at the gates, the elders, the priests, his father, sisters, mother and friends beg him to come out and are refused. Only Cleopatra’s plea about the fate of a captured city moves him, and he goes out and drives off the danger, but the Aetolians do not give him the gifts they had promised (Homer, Iliad 9.529–599). Apollodorus gives this as the other account: war breaks out between the Curetes and the Calydonians when the sons of Thestius claim the skin on the ground that their brother Iphiclus had hit the boar first; Meleager kills some of them in a sally, Althaea curses him, and he stays at home in anger until his wife persuades him to fight; he kills the rest of the sons of Thestius and falls fighting (Library 1.8.3).

Pausanias adds that the poems called the Eoeae and the Minyas say that Apollo helped the Curetes against the Aetolians and that Meleager was killed by Apollo (Pausanias 10.31.3). Pausanias saw Meleager in Polygnotus’ painting of the underworld at Delphi (10.31.3), and quotes verses that say a swift flame consumed him when the brand was destroyed by his mother (10.31.4).

Family

Meleager married Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa (Iliad 9.556–557; Pausanias 4.2.7). According to the epic Cypria, they had a daughter, Polydora, who married Protesilaus (Pausanias 4.2.7). The old tradition does not make Atalanta his wife.

Meleager Sources

Homer, Iliad 9.529–599; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.190–201; Apollodorus, Library 1.8.1–3; Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.380–546; Pausanias 4.2.7, 8.45.6, 8.47.2, 10.31.3–4.

See Also: The Fates, Artemis, Atalanta, Oeneus, Althaea, Argonauts