Calydon

Calydon was a city of Aetolia in central Greece. It was the home of King Oeneus and his son Meleager, and it gave its name to the Calydonian Boar, the huge animal that Artemis sent against its land. The hunt for the boar, and the war that followed it, are among the most widely told stories of Greek heroic myth.

The City and Its Kings

Apollodorus (1.7.6–7) traces the Aetolians to Aetolus, son of Endymion, who came from Elis and gave the country his name. His sons Pleuron and Calydon gave their names to the two chief cities of Aetolia, and Calydon was the eponym of this one. Some generations later the city was ruled by Oeneus, who, according to Apollodorus (1.8.1), was the first to receive a vine-plant from Dionysus. Oeneus was the father of Meleager and Deianira by Althaea, and of Tydeus by a later wife; Tydeus, exiled from Calydon for bloodshed, went to Argos and became one of the Seven Against Thebes (1.8.5).

The Calydonian Boar

In the Iliad (9.533–542) Phoenix says that Oeneus offered the first fruits of his harvest to the other gods but not to Artemis, whether he forgot or did not think of it, and that in anger she sent a huge white-tusked boar that uprooted the trees of his orchards. Apollodorus (1.8.2) tells the same: Oeneus forgot Artemis alone, and the boar she sent kept the land from being sown and killed cattle and people. Oeneus gathered the noblest men of Greece to hunt it, promising the hide as a prize to whoever killed it, and feasted them for nine days. Atalanta was the first to wound the boar, with an arrow in its back; Amphiaraus hit it in the eye, and Meleager stabbed it in the flank and killed it. He then gave the hide to Atalanta (Library 1.8.2). Ovid tells the hunt at length in the Metamorphoses (8.260–546).

Homer says that Meleager killed the boar after gathering huntsmen and hounds from many cities, and that Artemis then stirred up fighting between the Curetes and the Aetolians over the animal’s head and hide (Iliad 9.543–549). No ancient author names the mountain where the boar was hunted; Strabo (10.2.4) places Mount Aracynthus in the middle of Aetolia near New Pleuron, but does not connect it with the boar.

Meleager’s Death

The prize caused a quarrel. The sons of Thestius, Althaea’s brothers, thought it a disgrace that a woman should take the prize and took the hide from Atalanta, and Meleager killed them in his rage. According to Apollodorus (1.8.2–3), when Meleager was seven days old the Fates had said he would die when the brand burning on the hearth was consumed, and Althaea had snatched it from the fire and hidden it in a chest. In grief for her brothers she kindled the brand, and Meleager died at once. Apollodorus adds the other version, which agrees with Homer: war broke out between the Curetes and the Calydonians over the hide, Meleager fell in the fighting, and Althaea and his wife Cleopatra hanged themselves (1.8.3). Diodorus (4.34.2–7) follows the Atalanta version: the sons of Thestius waylaid her on her way back to Arcadia and took the skin, Meleager killed them, and Althaea cursed her son and later hanged herself in remorse; he gives the burning brand only as what “certain writers of myths” say. The fuller story belongs on the pages of Meleager and the Calydonian Boar.

The War with the Curetes

Homer tells a different part of the story. In the Iliad (9.529–599) Phoenix tells Achilles how the Curetes fought the Aetolians around Calydon, and how Meleager, angry, withdrew from the fighting. His wife Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa, then begged him with tears, describing what happens to men whose city is taken, and he went out to defend the city. But, as Phoenix says, the Aetolians did not give him the gifts they had promised. Phoenix offers the story as a warning to Achilles to give up his own anger.

Heracles at Calydon

Calydon was also where Heracles won his last wife. Apollodorus (2.7.5) says that he came to Calydon to woo Deianira, Oeneus’ daughter, and wrestled for her with the river god Achelous, who took the form of a bull; Heracles broke off one of his horns and won the bride. While living with Oeneus he accidentally killed the boy Eunomus, who was serving at table, and although the boy’s father forgave him he chose to go into exile, taking Deianira with him; on the way the centaur Nessus tried to carry her off at the river Euenus (2.7.6). Sophocles’ Women of Trachis also tells of the wrestling through Deianira’s own account, though there she is living in her father’s house at Pleuron, the other great city of Aetolia (lines 6–27, 507–530).

The Sanctuary of Artemis Laphria

Strabo (10.2.21) mentions near Calydon a temple of Apollo Laphrius, and Pausanias records that the Calydonians worshipped Artemis above all the gods under the title Laphria (4.31.7; 7.18.8–13). He says that after Augustus laid waste to Calydon and the rest of Aetolia, the people of Patrae obtained the image of Laphria, and that it was still worshipped on the acropolis of Patrae in his time. He describes the yearly festival at Patrae, where green logs were stacked in a circle around the altar and living animals and fruit were thrown onto the fire.

See Also: Calydonian Boar, Meleager, Oeneus, Althaea, Artemis, Deianira, Heracles, Tydeus, Achelous, Dionysus