Meleager was a hero in Greek mythology, venerated at his temenos at Calydon in Aetolia. A Calydonian prince, he was famed as the host and victor of the Calydonian boar hunt and was also counted among the Argonauts. His most enduring story tells how his life was bound to a burning brand: when his mother Althaea cast it into the fire, he died.
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I.Mythology
Meleager was a Calydonian prince as the son of Althaea and the vintner King Oeneus, or according to some, of the god Ares. He was the brother of Deianeira, Toxeus, Clymenus, Periphas, Agelaus (or Ageleus), Thyreus (or Phereus or Pheres), Gorge, Eurymede and Melanippe.
Meleager was the father of Parthenopeus by Atalanta, but he married Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa. They had a daughter, Polydora, who became the bride of Protesilaus, who left her bed on their wedding-night to join the expedition to Troy.
II.Calydonian Boar Hunt
When Meleager was born, the Moirai (the Fates) predicted he would only live until a piece of wood, then burning in the family hearth, was consumed by fire. Overhearing them, Althaea immediately doused and hid it.
Oeneus sent Meleager to gather up heroes from all over Greece to hunt the Calydonian boar that had been terrorizing the area and rooting up the vines, as Oeneus had omitted Artemis at a festival in which he honored the other gods. In addition to the heroes he required, he chose Atalanta, a fierce huntress, whom he loved. According to one account of the hunt, when the centaurs Hylaeus and Rhoecus tried to rape Atalanta, Meleager killed them. Then Atalanta wounded the boar and Meleager killed it. He awarded her the hide since she had drawn the first drop of blood.
Meleager's uncles Toxeus, the "archer", and Plexippus grew enraged that the prize was given to a woman. Meleager killed them in the following argument. He also killed Iphicles and Eurypylus for insulting Atalanta. When Althaea found out that Meleager had killed her brothers, she placed the piece of wood given to her by the Fates upon the fire, thus fulfilling the prophecy and killing her own son. Meleager's sisters, who mourned his death excessively, were turned into guineafowl (meleagrides).
III.Afterlife
In the underworld, Meleager was the only shade that did not flee Heracles, who had come after Cerberus. In Bacchylides' Ode V he is depicted as still in his shining armor, so formidable in that account that Heracles reached for his bow to defend himself. Heracles was moved to tears by Meleager's account; Meleager had left his sister Deianira unwedded in his father's house, and entreated Heracles to take her as his bride. Bacchylides breaks off his account of the meeting without noting that in this way Heracles chooses a disastrous wife.
According to Pliny the Elder's Natural History (Book 37, Chapter 11), Sophocles believed that amber is produced in the countries beyond India, from the tears shed for Meleager by the birds called meleagrides.
IV.Influences
Among the Romans, the heroes assembled by Meleager for the Calydonian hunt provided a theme of multiple nudes in striking action, to be portrayed frieze-like on sarcophagi.
Meleager's story has similarities with the Scandinavian Norna-Gests þáttr.