Plexippus, a son of Thestius of Aetolia and so a maternal uncle of Meleager, fell in the deadly quarrel that followed the killing of the Calydonian boar — slain by his own nephew over the disputed hide.1
Apollodorus places Plexippus in the house of Thestius: by Eurythemis, daughter of Cleoboea, Thestius fathered the daughters Althaea, Leda, and Hypermnestra, and the sons Iphiclus, Evippus, Plexippus, and Eurypylus. Through his sister Althaea, who married Oeneus of Calydon, Plexippus stood uncle to the hero Meleager.2
When the great boar of Calydon was hunted down, the sons of Thestius were among the company; but after Meleager awarded the hide to the huntress Atalanta, the quarrel turned to slaughter. Apollodorus reports plainly that Meleager in his rage slew the sons of Thestius — among whom Plexippus is numbered — and so brought the curse of kindred blood upon his own house.3
Ovid sharpens the scene into single combat: when the Thestiads moved to seize the prize, Meleager drove his sword into the breast of Plexippus, caught unawares, and then — while the second brother, Toxeus, wavered between vengeance and flight — plunged the blade, still smoking with a brother's blood, into him as well.4
Hyginus preserves a different tally of the quarrelling uncles. In one place he names Idaeus, Plexippus, and Lynceus as the brothers of Althaea who tried to take the hide from Atalanta, so that Meleager, putting love before kinship, killed his kin; elsewhere he counts the slain uncles as Plexippus and Agenor, killed for the sake of Atalanta, daughter of Schoeneus.5
Not every source names Plexippus among the fallen. Pausanias, describing the sculptured pediment of Athena Alea's temple at Tegea, gives the sons of Thestius and brothers of Althaea as Prothous and Cometes — a variant roster that omits Plexippus altogether.6
Through his sister Leda the Thestiads stand one marriage from the Spartan throne: when Hippocoon drove Tyndareus and Icarius from Lacedaemon, the exiles fought at Thestius' side and there Tyndareus wedded Leda — so Plexippus, uncle to the future queen of Sparta, belongs to the Aetolian wing that fed the Tyndarid house even though he never ruled there himself.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
