An Arcadian virgin huntress who set a deadly footrace for her suitors and was beaten at last by the one who scattered Aphrodite's golden apples in her path.1
Apollodorus gives her the Arcadian descent: Iasus, son of Lycurgus, had a daughter Atalanta by Clymene, daughter of Minyas. Because he wanted male children he exposed the infant, but a she-bear came again and again to give her suck, until hunters found her and reared her among themselves. Grown to womanhood she kept herself a virgin, hunting in the wilderness and remaining always under arms; and when the centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus tried to force her, she shot them both down.2
Apollodorus, having called her the daughter of Iasus, adds that Hesiod and others made her the daughter of Schoeneus, while Euripides made her the daughter of Maenalus; and in his own roster of the Calydonian chiefs he names 'Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus, from Arcadia.' Hyginus likewise calls the racing maiden the daughter of Schoeneus, and Ovid names Schoeneus as her father in the tale of the footrace.3
When Oeneus gathered the chiefs against the boar of Calydon, Atalanta came among them, though some scorned to hunt beside a woman; Meleager, who had Cleopatra to wife, desired a child by her and compelled them to take her along. She was the first to shoot the boar, striking it in the back, and after it was slain Meleager gave her its hide for the first wound; but when the sons of Thestius wrested the spoil away he killed them, and so was himself destroyed.4
Ovid colours the same hunt: Atalanta of the Lycaean woods fitted a sharp arrow to the string and let it fly, and the shaft quivered beneath the beast's ear, reddening its bristles with the first blood drawn. When the boar lay dead Meleager gave her its hide and head, kindling the quarrel that brought his own ruin.5
She tried for the open contests of the age as well. Apollodorus names her among the Argonauts and says that at the funeral games of Pelias she wrestled with Peleus and won; Apollonius tells that she gave Jason a spear as a guest-gift when she met him gladly in Maenalus, eager to follow the quest, but that he himself kept her from the crew, fearing bitter strife on account of her love.6
When her father urged her to marry, she set a race for death: a stake fixed in the course, the wooer running ahead unarmed while she pursued in arms, the caught man slain on the spot and the man who outran her winning her hand. Apollodorus tells that after many had perished Melanion came to run for love of her, carrying golden apples from Aphrodite; pursued, he threw them down one by one, and she, stooping to pick up the dropped fruit, was beaten, and so he married her. Hyginus and Ovid name the winner Hippomenes — for Hyginus the son of Megareus, whom Venus furnished with three apples and taught their use; and Ovid adds that an oracle had warned Atalanta that a husband would be her own harm.7
The marriage ended in transformation, though the sources scatter the setting. Apollodorus says that out hunting the pair entered the precinct of Zeus and, taking their fill of love there, were changed into lions. Hyginus places the offence in a shrine on Mount Parnassus, where Hippomenes — forgetting to thank Venus — lay with Atalanta, and Jupiter turned them into lion and lioness; Ovid sets the union in the shrine of the Mother of the gods, where tower-crowned Cybele changed the pair into lions.8
Of her motherhood the accounts agree on the son and dispute the father: Apollodorus says that by Melanion, or by Ares, she bore Parthenopaeus, who went to the war against Thebes; Hyginus calls him the son of Meleager by Atalanta, daughter of Iasius, exposed on Mount Parthenius and reared by shepherds, and counts him among the Seven who fell at Thebes.9
Pausanias, describing the chest of Cypselus at Olympia, saw Atalanta painted holding a young deer beside Melanion.10
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
