Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Calydon.
The gallery
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (Tondo of a Laconian Black-Figure Cup)
Attributed to the Naucratis Painter, c. 555 BC
Calydon, the eponymous hero who gave his name to the Aetolian city, is almost never shown in person, but the myth that immortalised his city is one of the oldest hunting legends in Greek art. In this tondo from a Laconian black-figure kylix, painted around the mid-sixth century BC and attributed to the Naucratis Painter, a ring of spear-armed hunters and a hound close in on the monstrous boar that the offended Artemis loosed upon the fields of Calydon. The compact circular composition, with hunters advancing from both sides toward the bristling beast, is the standard archaic schema for the Calydonian hunt and one of the earliest surviving images of the saga set in Calydon's territory. Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. E 670).
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (detail of the François Vase)
Kleitias (painter) and Ergotimos (potter), c. 570 BC
On the famous François Vase, an Attic black-figure volute krater signed by the painter Kleitias and the potter Ergotimos around 570 BC, the uppermost frieze of one side is given over to the hunt of the Calydonian Boar. A long line of named heroes and hounds, their identities inscribed beside them, presses the great boar that ravaged the lands of Calydon after King Oeneus neglected Artemis. Among the labelled figures appear Meleager and Atalanta, the central pair of the saga, alongside the leading huntsmen of the age. As one of the earliest and most detailed narrative renderings of the hunt that bears Calydon's name, the panel is a key witness to how Greeks of the archaic period pictured the city's defining myth. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (Roman marble sarcophagus from Vicovaro)
Unknown (Roman workshop), c. 2nd–3rd century AD
This Roman marble sarcophagus, found at Vicovaro near Rome, carries across its front a crowded relief of the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, the catastrophe that struck the realm of Calydon when Artemis sent the beast to punish a forgotten sacrifice. Hunters on foot and horseback, hounds, and the fallen converge on the boar at the centre, with Meleager delivering the fatal blow and the huntress Atalanta among the company. Roman patrons favoured the Calydonian hunt for funerary monuments because its blend of valour, danger and untimely death—Meleager's own doom soon followed his triumph—suited the consolatory imagery of the tomb. Centuries after Calydon itself had faded, its myth still framed Roman ideas of heroism and mortality. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini, Rome (inv. MC 917).
Meleager and Atalanta (The Calydonian Boar Hunt)
After Giulio Romano, 16th century
Composed after a design by the Renaissance master Giulio Romano, pupil of Raphael, this scene revives the hunt that made the city of Calydon famous. Set in the wooded country around Calydon, it shows the hero Meleager and the swift huntress Atalanta amid the press of spearmen and dogs as the great boar is brought down. The episode, drawn ultimately from Ovid's Metamorphoses, gave Renaissance and Baroque artists a vehicle for muscular figures in violent motion and for the celebrated love of Meleager and Atalanta. By Giulio Romano's day the eponymous Calydon survived only as the name of a legendary place, but the hunt that bore its name remained one of the most reproduced of all classical myths.