Greetings!
I know, I know we’re a day late but you’ll have to excuse us; we are still too excited from meeting up and going to Comicdom and all that jazz. :-D
Soooo, as we’ve already explained, we’ll be talking about some famous (or not so famous) couples from greek mythology. Since some of the stories are not widely known, we figured it would be best to properly recount (to our best knowledge anyway) the myths on Wednesdays (or Thursdays :-p ) and then, on the weekends, upload the story and art (yay!) based on whichever myth we’ll be talking about.
This week we’ll be talking about Meleager and Atalanta. Who were they? Good question, so let's get to it!
Atalanta was the daughter of King Iasus; he wanted a son to carry on his name, so when Atalanta was born, he was disappointed. He abandoned her on a mountaintop to die, but a she-bear cared for Atalanta, until some hunters found and adopted her. Naturally, growing up in the wild, she became a fierce huntress. Later on, she became one of Artemis’s followers and took an oath of virginity, expressing no interest in marriage.
Meleager was the son of Athaea and King Oeneus. When he was a newborn, the Fates, that visited every newborn, visited him and predicted that he’d become noble and brave but that he would only live until the brand that burned in the family hearth, was consumed by fire. His mother overheard them; once they departed, she put out the fire, grabbed the brand and secured it away.
Years passed by and Meleager had indeed grown up to become the noble and brave man the Fates had predicted he’d be. During a festival, King Oeneus had omitted honouring Artemis in his rites to the Olympian gods. Angered, she sent a boar to ravage his kingdom, Calydon.
King Oeneus then put Meleager in charge of the hunt for the boar; many heroes from all over Greece came to his aid. Atalanta being the fierce huntress she was, joined the hunt too. Many of the participants were displeased with this turn of events, because a woman joining a hunt, was simply unheard of.
Meleager, despite the fact that he was already married to Cleopatra, the moment he saw Atalanta, he instantly fell in love with her. He grew fiercely protective of her, constantly defending her honour and arguing with his fellow hunters.
In the end, Atalanta was the first to wound the boar and Meleager was the one to kill it. He awarded her the boar’s head and skin since she had drawn the first drop of blood. His uncles, Toxeus and Plexippus, were enraged that he gave up his prize (which traditionally went to the person killing the prey or, if he didn’t want it, to his relatives) to a woman. An argument followed, and Meleager ended up killing his uncles.
When his mother found out that Meleager had killed her brothers, she took the brand that she had been hiding for all those years and placed it back on the fire, thus killing her son and fulfilling the prophecy.
Lovely myth, no? :-p
There’s another, less popular (and less likely too) version of their story though; Meleager was in love with Atalanta; he had even left his wife, Cleopatra, for her sake. Atalanta returned his feelings but they couldn’t consummate their relationship, because an oracle had predicted that the loss of her virginity would be lethal.
Meleager, disappointed at this turn of events, joined Jason to his quest for the Golden Fleece. Atalanta couldn’t bear the thought of being away from him, so she followed, and was the only known woman on the Argo.
She had been of great help to Jason’s crew; during the battle at Colchis though, she suffered injury. Medea healed her, and, being a witch, reversed the oracle that prevented Atalanta from…well, having sex.
It’s not known what happened to them once the quest for the Golden Fleece was over. Did they get their happy ending? Did they part ways?
No one knows. If it’s any help though, Atalanta did have a son, so… ;-)
See you on the weekend!
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