When Oeneus of Calydon forgot Artemis among the harvest gods, the Archer-goddess loosed a white-tusked boar on Aetolia; Meleager son of Oeneus gathered heroes from many cities, and Atalanta drew first blood — but the hide he gave her kindled a quarrel with his mother's brothers, and Althaea at last destroyed the brand on which his life hung.1
The slighted sacrifice
Oeneus of rocky Calydon was an honourable king, sprung of the Aetolian line of Portheus, and the first of mortals to receive the vine from Dionysus. When the year's first-fruits were offered, he made hecatombs to every god — but Artemis alone received nothing. Homer says the Archer-goddess of the golden throne waxed wroth that Oeneus offered her no share from his rich orchard-land, while the other gods feasted; whether he forgot her or marked it not, she sent a fierce white-tusked boar that wasted his fields, destroyed the cattle, and killed the people who met it. Apollodorus tells the same slight plainly: in sacrificing the annual crops to all the gods Oeneus forgot Artemis alone. Ovid paints the altars of Ceres, Bacchus, and Minerva heaped with incense while Diana's stood bare; Hyginus too makes the yearly sacrifice she alone was denied the cause of the plague-beast. The goddess who guards the wild had loosed her own creature on the kingdom of the vine.2
The muster at Calydon⚖
To destroy the monster Oeneus called together the noblest huntsmen of Greece. Meleager son of Oeneus — whom Apollodorus makes the mortal king's son, though Hyginus and Ovid say Mars also lay with Althaea in one night — led the muster from Calydon. Jason came from Iolcus, Theseus from Athens, the Dioscuri Castor and Polydeuces from Sparta, Peleus and Telamon from Aegina, and many more whom Hyginus rolls in his list of the hunters. Apollonius numbers Meleager among the Argonauts as well, a youth from Calydon second only to Heracles in the bold band. Among them came Atalanta, the swift-footed huntress — Apollodorus names her daughter of Schoeneus from Arcadia in this roster, though elsewhere he gives her to Iasus son of Lycurgus; the dispute on her parentage lives quietly beside her fame. Some scorned to hunt beside a woman, but Meleager, who had Cleopatra daughter of Idas and Marpessa to wife, desired a child by Atalanta and compelled them to take her along.3
First blood in the thicket
The boar Artemis sent was of extraordinary size and strength. Hounds were loosed and spears thrown; Pausanias remembers Ancaeus son of Lycurgus, the Arcadian who stood up to the beast though wounded — while Atalanta, first of all the company to strike, shot it in the back with her arrow. Ovid lingers on the shaft quivering beneath the ear and reddening the bristles with the first blood drawn; Pausanias at Tegea saw the scene painted on the temple, the boar in the centre and Atalanta winning the prize of valour for that first wound. The hunt dragged on through the Aetolian woods until the heroes closed on the quarry; Ancaeus was killed by the brute in the press, but the beast could not outrun them all forever.4
The slayer and the spoil
Meleager himself brought the boar down. Homer says plainly that the boar did Meleager son of Oeneus slay — the deed that would echo in Phoenix's embassy to Achilles generations later at Troy. When the carcass lay in the clearing, the hero faced a quarrel over honour. Atalanta had drawn first blood; Meleager, glad above the rest, cried in Ovid's telling, "Give honor to the courage of a maid!" and awarded her the head and hide. Apollodorus adds that he gave her the spoils because he desired to beget a child by her. So the hunt ended in triumph — but Artemis, who had sent the beast, was not finished with Calydon. About the carcass she would kindle strife, and the kingdom that had slighted her altar would pay in kin-blood.5
The uncles slain
The sons of Thestius — maternal uncles of Meleager through Queen Althaea — would not accept a woman bearing off the prize. Plexippus and his brothers, Apollodorus says, seized the hide from Atalanta; Ovid names Plexippus and a second uncle in the quarrel, and in his rage Meleager ran them through with his sword. The slaughter of her brothers reached Althaea as she bore offerings for her victorious son: she met the biers of her kin carried home from the hunt, and grief for blood kin began to war with love for her child. The Calydonian house, which had united all Greece against a god's beast, now turned on itself — and the Fates' old prophecy, tied to a brand on the hearth, waited in the queen's chest.6
The brand and the curse⚖
When Meleager was born, the Fates had appeared to Althaea and declared that the child would live only so long as the brand burning on the hearth remained unconsumed; she snatched it from the fire, quenched it, and hid it away. Now, grieving for her brothers, she kindled that hidden billet — Ovid tells how four times she drew it to the flames and four times drew back before vengeance for kin overmastered a mother's love, and as the wood burned Meleager, far off and ignorant, felt an unseen fire consume him and died. Apollodorus gives the same death by the brand. Homer knows a different ruin: about the boar's carcass Artemis raised war between the Aetolians and the Curetes over the head and hide; wroth at heart against his mother Althaea, Meleager withdrew beside his wife Cleopatra until the city was besieged, for Althaea had beaten on the all-nurturing earth and called on Hades and dread Persephone to bring death upon her son, and the Fury that walks in darkness heard her out of Erebus. Pausanias notes the fork directly — Homer's curse and Curetes' war, the Eoeae and Minyad with Apollo killing Meleager, and the brand-drama first treated by Phrynichus. Cleopatra mourned; Althaea slew herself when she learned what she had done. The tusks of the boar would hang in Athena's temple at Tegea long after, trophies of the hunt that destroyed the hunter.7
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