Meleager (Ancient Greek Μελέαγρος, Meléagros) was a Calydonian prince and hero of Greek mythology, venerated at a temenos in Calydon in Aetolia. He hosted and led the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition reworked by Homer, sailed among the Argonauts, and in the best-known tale died when his mother Althaea burned the brand to which the Fates had bound his life. His love for the huntress Atalanta and his quarrel with her detractors over the boar's hide drive the catastrophe.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Meleager" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
Meleager was a Calydonian prince, son of Althaea and the vintner-king Oeneus — or, according to some, of the god Ares. His siblings include Deianeira, Toxeus, Clymenus, Periphas, Agelaus (or Ageleus), Thyreus (or Phereus or Pheres), Gorge, Eurymede, and Melanippe.
He was said to be the father of Parthenopaeus by Atalanta, though he married Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa. They had a daughter, Polydora, who became the bride of Protesilaus — the hero who left her on their wedding night to join the expedition to Troy. He is also counted among Jason's Argonauts.
II.Calydonian boar hunt
At Meleager's birth the Moirai (Fates) foretold that he would live only until a brand then burning on the hearth was consumed. Althaea overheard them, quenched the brand, and hid it.
When Oeneus omitted Artemis from a harvest festival, the goddess sent the Calydonian boar to ravage the land and the vines. Oeneus sent Meleager to gather heroes from all Greece for the hunt. Meleager also chose Atalanta, the fierce huntress he loved. In one account he killed the centaurs Hylaeus and Rhoecus when they tried to rape her. Atalanta wounded the boar and Meleager killed it; he awarded her the hide because she had drawn first blood.
His maternal uncles Toxeus and Plexippus were enraged that a woman received the prize. In the quarrel Meleager killed them; he also killed Iphicles and Eurypylus for insulting Atalanta. When Althaea learned that her son had slain her brothers, she cast the hidden brand into the fire, fulfilling the prophecy and killing him. His sisters, mourning excessively, were turned into guineafowl (meleagrides).
III.Afterlife
In the underworld Meleager was the only shade that did not flee Heracles when the hero came for Cerberus. In Bacchylides' Ode V he still wears shining armour, so formidable that Heracles reaches for his bow. Moved to tears by Meleager's story, Heracles hears that Deianira remains unwedded in their father's house and is entreated to take her as bride — Bacchylides breaks off without noting that Heracles thereby chooses a disastrous wife.
Pliny the Elder (Natural History 37.11) reports that Sophocles believed amber is produced beyond India from tears shed for Meleager by the birds called meleagrides.
IV.Influences
Among the Romans, the heroes assembled for the Calydonian hunt furnished a theme of multiple nudes in striking action, portrayed frieze-like on sarcophagi. Meleager's story has been compared with the Scandinavian Norna-Gests þáttr, which likewise binds a life to a burning brand or candle.