Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

T HE C ALYDONIAN B OAR Somehow the citizenry and rulers of the city state of Calydon, part of the kingdom of Aetolia, now called Thessaly, had become lax in their devotions to the goddess Artemis. This was still a time when it was foolish to neglect any jealous deity, least of all the chaste huntress of the moon. As punishment for so insulting a slight to her honour and dignity, Artemis sent to Calydon a monstrous boarfn5 with razor-sharp tusks the size of tree branches and an insatiable appetite for goats, sheep, cows, horses and infant humans. It trampled down the crops, ravaged the vineyards and barns and, like Robert Browning’s rats in Hamelin, bit the babies in their cradles and drank the soup from the cooks’ own ladles. And much worse. The people in the countryside fled in terror to within the city walls and soon famine threatened. Oeneus, the King of Calydon – in his excessive worship of Dionysusfn6 over the other Olympians – had been the one most directly responsible for Artemis’s wrath, and so he took it upon himself to be the one to devise the means to rid the land of the rampaging boar. He sent out word out to all Greece and Asia Minor. ‘The Calydonian Hunt will gather in one month. Let only the bravest and best hunters come forward. The reward for whosoever makes the killing thrust will be the right to keep the trophies of the chase: the beast’s tusks and pelt. But, more importantly, eternal glory and honour in the annals of history will be theirs as the conqueror of the Calydonian Boar and as the greatest hero of the age.’ Many of those who answered Oeneus’s call were former Argonauts – including Jason himselffn7 – bored by the return to the placid dullness of domestic life after the camaraderie and excitement of the quest for the Golden Fleece. The band of hunters would be led by Oeneus’s son Prince Meleager, himself a distinguished member of the Argo’s crew. Though he did not know it, Meleager lived under a strange curse, and it is worth going back to the time of his birth to hear about it. I have said that Meleager was the son of Oeneus, but it seems likely that Ares, the god of war, had some part in his paternity too. As we have already heard, this is a feature of the heroes of the age. It is certain, though, that his mother was Oeneus’s queen ALTHAEA, who came from a most distinguished royal line herself, sometimes known, on account of its patriarch THESTIOS, as the THESTIADES. She had four brothers, an obscure sister called HYPERMNESTRA, whose name surely is due for a revival,fn8 and another called Leda, whose experience with Zeus in the form of a swan was to inspire many artists in ages yet unborn. Her story is for another time. Our attention for now is on Althaea, who lay with Oeneus (or possibly Ares) and nine months later gave birth to a boy, Meleager. It was a difficult labour and the effort sent Althaea into a deep sleep. The baby lay babbling in its cot before the fire. The mother slept on. Into this peaceful scene crept the three Fates, the Moirai. This baby, who could well be a son of Ares, might have an important future and it was for the Fates to tell it in their usual manner. Clotho spun the thread of Meleager’s life and declared the boy would be noble. Lachesis measured it by drawing it out from Clotho’s spindle. She foretold that Meleager would be accounted brave by all who knew him. Atropos snipped the length of the yarn and announced that for all her sisters’ prognostications she knew that the child would only live as long as the central log in the fireplace remained unconsumed by fire. ‘What can you mean?’ asked Lachesis and Clotho. ‘When that log burns up and is no more,’ said Atropos, ‘so will Meleager, son of Ares, Oeneus and Althaea, be no more!’ All three gave a cackle of delight and vanished into the night air chanting: Meleager’s life will end in a flash When his log of fate is turned to ash Althaea opened her eyes wide. Could she really have heard that right, or was it some mad dream? She got out of bed and went to the fire. There was indeed a great log in the centre of the hearth. Flames were flickering around it, but it had not yet fully caught light. In her fevered imagination it resembled, in size and form, a newborn baby. Her own infant Meleager! She pulled the log out and dropped it hastily into a copper vat of water that stood warming by the fire. The flames went out with a sizzle. The baby gurgled happily in its cradle. What should she do now? She wrapped the log in a swaddling blanket and hurried down to one of the unvisited and unused basement rooms in the palace, a room with an earthen floor where she could bury the log deep. Her son might have died in five minutes if she had done nothing. Now he might live for eternity! So we have a picture of the Calydonian palace of King Oeneus and Queen Althaea, outside the walls of which rampages a marauding boar. Their heir, the tall, strong, noble and brave Prince Meleager – now fully grown – lives with them, of course, as do his six sisters – GORGE, MELANIPPE, EURYMEDE, Deianirafn9, MOTHONE and PERIMEDE – and his uncles, Althaea’s four brothers, the Thestiades – TOXEUS, EVIPPUS, PLEXIPPUS and EURYPYLUS. The Thestiades are fine huntsmen, but fully aware that in order to corner and catch a prey as huge and monstrous as the Calydonian Boar they will need every member of the great hunting party that has answered Oeneus’s summons. But – what can this be? – the uncles burst out laughing when a tall woman, dressed in animal skins, a hunting bow over her shoulder and hounds at her feet, enters the palace and hurls a spear into the wall to stake her claim to join the hunting party. Meleager has taken one look at this slim, fierce, tanned, toned and beautiful girl and fallen instantly in love.fn10 ‘If she wants to join us, I have no objection.’ Meleager’s uncles hoot with derision. ‘Girls can’t throw,’ jeers Toxeus. ‘Girls can’t run in a straight line without bumping into trees or tripping over,’ snorts Evippus. ‘Girls can’t shoot arrows without the bowstring snapping back and stinging them in the face,’ smirks Plexippus. ‘Girls don’t have the stomach to kill,’ sneers Eurypylus. ‘Let us see,’ says Atalanta, and at the sound of her dark, throbbing, yet commanding voice Meleager falls even more deeply in love. She has gone to the window. ‘Those three trees. Which of us can put an arrow in each trunk first?’ The uncles join her at the window and follow her gaze to a distant line of three aspens, shaking in the breeze. ‘You may give the signal,’ Atalanta tells Meleager. Meleager raises an arm and drops it. ‘Fire at will!’ he cries. The Thestiades scramble to pluck arrows from their quivers and draw back their bows but – ‘Wheep, wheep, wheep!’ Three arrows fly in an instant from Atalanta’s bow and now she is standing with her back to the window, her arms folded and a mocking smile playing on her face. Meleager and the uncles look over her shoulder and towards the trees. In each of the aspen trunks is embedded an arrow, perfectly centred. In his hectic rush to draw at speed, Plexippus has fumbled his bow, which falls with a clatter to the floor. He does not take kindly to being made to look like a clumsy child. ‘Ah, but strength,’ he growls. ‘I’ll grant you may have a reasonable eye and quick hands, but this boar is fierce and strong. A mere woman could never hope –’ No one will ever discover what he is going to say next. Speech and breath are robbed of him as he finds himself quite unexpectedly lifted off his feet. Atalanta has picked him up and raised him above her head as if he were no heavier than a kitten. ‘Where shall I throw him?’ she enquires of the others. ‘Out of the window or into the fire?’ Hastily they concede her right to join them in the hunt. But there is now disgruntlement in the ranks of the hunting party. The proud brothers cannot know, as we do, that Artemis not only sent the boar to Calydon, but also sent her most fanatical votary, Atalanta, to represent her in the hunt. Artemis intends, through Atalanta, to sow as much mischief in the ranks of the hunters as she can. How much Atalanta is a knowing proxy for the goddess and how much an unconscious vessel for her will has never quite been decided. The smitten Meleager got nowhere with this wonderful girl who was, in the words of Edith Hamilton, ‘too boyish to be a maiden, too maidenly to be a boy.’ As a devoted follower of Artemis, Atalanta had, as a matter of course, turned her back on men and on love. Nonetheless, she welcomed Meleager as a companion, and for a young man so deeply in love, the thrilling propinquity of the beautiful huntress was better than nothing. The classical sources name at least fifty members of the hunting party that gathers around Meleager and the four Thestiades. As with the manifest of the Argo there is much confusion and inconsistency in the sources and perhaps a deal of wishful thinking on the part of later grand Greek families who wanted to claim descent from these heroes. Aside from Jason, the throng of former Argonauts present at the hunt includes Meleager’s cousins, the heavenly twins Castor and Pollux; bold Pirithous, King of the Lapiths; wise Nestor of Pylos and the indefatigable brothers Peleus and Telamon; hospitable Admetus, the friend of Heracles and sometime lover of Apollo; and Asclepius, unrivalled master of the medical arts. Even the great Theseus is there, drawn as much by his bond with Pirithous as by the addiction to extreme peril that unites them all. Such a muster of heroes will not be seen in the world again until the Trojan War. They are all men, save for Atalanta.