The Calydonian Boar Hunt
In brief
- King Oeneus of Calydon forgot Artemis when he made his harvest offerings, and she sent a boar the size of a bull to ruin the country.
- Every hero in Greece came for the hunt, including Atalanta, who drew first blood and was given the hide by Meleager.
- His uncles took the prize from her because she was a woman; he killed them for it, and his mother burned the log that his life was tied to.
Oeneus, king of Calydon, made his offerings at the end of a good harvest and worked through the gods one at a time: grain to Demeter, wine to Dionysus, oil to Athena. Artemis he left out. Ovid is careful to say it was neglect rather than insult, which made no difference at all. She sent a boar into Aetolia with eyes like coals and tusks the size of an elephant's, and it flattened the vines and the standing corn and killed the herdsmen with the herds.
The hunt that assembled for it was the largest gathering of heroes before Troy: Theseus from Athens, Jason, the sons of Thestius who were the king's own brothers-in-law, Nestor while he was still young enough to run, and Atalanta of Arcadia, who came with her hair tied back in a single knot, an ivory quiver on her shoulder and a bow in her left hand. Meleager, the king's son, saw her and wanted her immediately, and had the sense to say nothing.
The first attempts were a shambles. Spears went wide or stuck in trees, one man was gored, another was killed by a friend's cast. It was Atalanta who put the first shot into the animal, an arrow under the ear that drew a thin line of blood down the bristles, and Meleager was the first to see it and the loudest about it.
He finished the boar with a spear through the shoulder and then a second between the ribs. When the men crowded round, he cut the hide off and carried it with the head to Atalanta and gave her both, saying the honour was hers and he was only sharing it. His uncles refused to accept it. A woman would not walk off with the prize of Calydon in front of them; they took the hide out of her hands and told her to be grateful she had been allowed on the hunt at all. Meleager killed them both where they stood.
His mother, Althaea, was carrying the offerings to the temple in thanks for her son's victory when the bodies of her brothers were brought in. She had, from the day Meleager was born, a piece of firewood the Fates had marked: while it stayed unburned, he lived. She had hidden it for years. She went and got it, and stood by the hearth for a long time, and put it in the fire. In the palace her son felt himself begin to burn from the inside without knowing why, and by the time the log was ash he was dead, and she used a rope on herself before the day was over.
