In Greek mythology, Althaea was the queen of Calydon through her marriage to King Oeneus. A daughter of King Thestius of Aetolia, she figures prominently in the myths surrounding the Calydonian boar hunt and is best known as the mother of the hero Meleager. She is infamous for ultimately causing her own son's death by burning the magical brand on which his life depended, in revenge for his killing of her brothers.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Althaea (mythology)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Overview
In Greek mythology, Althaea was queen of Calydon through her marriage to King Oeneus. She appears in the myths surrounding the fabled Calydonian boar hunt and is infamous for bringing about the death of her own son, the hero Meleager.
Her name is generally derived from the Ancient Greek verb meaning "to cure" and is taken to mean "healer"; it is also the name of a kind of mallow plant.
II.Family
Althaea was a daughter of King Thestius of Aetolia (himself a son of Ares) and thus a Pleuronian princess. Her mother is named in different accounts as either Leucippe or Eurythemis. Among her siblings were her sisters Leda and Hypermnestra and her brothers Iphiclus, Plexippus, Eurypylus and Evippus. Through her sister Leda she was aunt to Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, and the twins Castor and Pollux.
Althaea married King Oeneus of Calydon. By him she was the mother of several sons — including Meleager, Toxeus, Thyreus, Pheres, Clymenus, Agelaus and Periphas — and of daughters such as Deianeira, Gorge, Melanippe and Eurymede. Some traditions hold that Meleager was instead fathered by the war-god Ares, and that Ancaeus was her son by Poseidon.
III.Mythology
Seven days after Meleager was born, the three Fates appeared to Althaea and revealed that her son's life was bound to a log, or brand, burning in the family hearth: he would live only so long as the brand remained unconsumed by fire. To preserve him, Althaea snatched the brand from the flames and hid it away, in some versions burying it and in others locking it in a chest.
When Oeneus neglected to include Artemis in a sacrifice of first fruits, the offended goddess sent a monstrous boar to ravage the land of Calydon. Meleager gathered a band of hunters to destroy it, among them the huntress Atalanta and several of Althaea's brothers. Meleager killed the boar, but when he awarded its hide and tusks to Atalanta, his uncles were enraged; in the ensuing quarrel, after they forcibly took the prize from her, Meleager slew them.
On learning that her brothers had died at her son's hand, Althaea was consumed by grief and fury. She retrieved the hidden brand and threw it back into the fire, so that as it burned away Meleager perished. Overwhelmed afterward by remorse and sorrow, she took her own life, either by hanging herself or by the sword. Most of Meleager's sisters wept for him without ceasing until Artemis transformed them into birds known as the Meleagrides.
IV.Variant accounts
Different traditions told Meleager's death in different ways. In some versions Althaea destroyed her son by a curse rather than by burning the fatal brand.
Homer's account differs considerably. There Meleager's death is set against a war between the Calydonians and the Curetes, in the course of which Althaea, mourning the brothers she had lost, calls upon Hades and Persephone to bring about her own son's destruction.