Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Lycurgus.
The gallery
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (Tondo of a Laconian black-figure cup)
The Hunt Painter (also called the Naucratis Painter), c. 555 BC
In the tondo of this Laconian black-figure kylix, a ring of spear-bearing heroes closes in on the great boar that Artemis loosed against Calydon. Among the hunters who gathered for this contest were the Arcadian sons of King Lycurgus of Tegea — above all Ancaeus, whom Pausanias records as dying of the boar's tusks in this very hunt. The cup is one of the earliest surviving images of the saga and shows the Arcadian dimension of a story usually centred on Meleager and Atalanta. It is held in the Louvre (accession E 670), in the Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities.
The Calydonian Boar Hunt (Roman frieze)
Unknown (Roman), Roman period (1st–2nd century AD)
A Roman relief frieze depicting the climactic moment of the Calydonian boar hunt, the assembled heroes converging on the monstrous beast with spears and hounds. The hunting party drew warriors from across the Greek world, and the line of Lycurgus of Arcadia was prominently represented: his son Ancaeus, sent from Tegea, fell to the boar's charge during the chase. The carving distils the crowded, multi-figure tradition of the myth into a single dramatic surge of bodies. It is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Sarcophagus with the Calydonian Hunt (the Meleager Sarcophagus)
Unknown (Roman), Roman Imperial period (c. 2nd–3rd century AD)
Carved in Proconnesian marble, this Roman sarcophagus unfolds the Calydonian boar hunt as a frieze of heroes, hounds and the cornered boar, with Meleager and Artemis presiding over the action. Roman patrons favoured the subject for funerary monuments because its theme of a noble death in the hunt resonated with elite ideals; the goring of Ancaeus, son of Lycurgus of Arcadia, is one of the casualties embedded in this densely packed cast of hunters. The relief is held in the Capitoline Museums (Musei Capitolini, MC 917), Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.
Meleager and Atalanta resting after the Calydonian boar hunt (wall painting from Pompeii)
Unknown (Roman), 1st century AD
This fresco from a house at Pompeii (VI 9 3) shows the aftermath of the Calydonian hunt: Meleager seated with his spears and Atalanta beside him, the slain boar's threat now passed. The scene belongs to the wider cycle of the hunt in which the Arcadian house of Lycurgus took part — his son Ancaeus among the heroes who answered the summons to Calydon, where he met his death by the boar. The painting is conserved in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. 8980).