Meleager
Meleager | |
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Prince of Parthenpaios |
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In
Biography
Meleager was a Calydonian prince as the son of
Meleager was the father of
Mythology
Calydonian boar hunt
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Wall_painting_-_Meleagros_and_Atalanta_-_Pompeii_%28VI_9_3%29_-_Napoli_MAN_8980.jpg/220px-Wall_painting_-_Meleagros_and_Atalanta_-_Pompeii_%28VI_9_3%29_-_Napoli_MAN_8980.jpg)
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.[10]
Oeneus sent Meleager to gather up heroes from all over Greece
Meleager's uncles Toxeus, the "archer",[13] and Plexippus grew enraged that the prize was given to a woman. Meleager killed them in the following argument.[14] 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 that she had stolen from the Fates (the one that the Fates predicted, once engulfed with fire, would kill Meleager) upon the fire, thus fulfilling the prophecy and killing Meleager, her own son.[15] Meleager's sisters who mourned his death excessively were turned into guineafowl (meleagrides).[16]
Afterlife
In the underworld, his was the only shade that did not flee Heracles, who had come after Cerberus. In Bacchylides' Ode V, Meleager is depicted as still in his shining armor, so formidable, in Bacchylides' account, that Heracles reached for his bow to defend himself. Heracles was moved to tears by Meleager's account; Meleager had left his sister[17] Deianira unwedded in his father's house, and entreated Heracles to take her as his bride;[18] here Bacchylides breaks off his account of the meeting, without noting that in this way Heracles in the underworld 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 that are shed for Meleager, by the birds called "meleagrides".[19]
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.
Family tree
Gallery
- Meleager in art
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Meleager et Atalanta, after Giulio Romano
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Statue of Meleager modeled afterSkopas
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Meleager sarcophagus
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Meleager and Atalanta (17th century) by Jacob Jordaens
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Volterra, Italy. Etruscan cinerary urn; Hunt of Maleager, Volterra. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
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Meleager, Scopas' influence. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
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Meleager and Atalanta Setting Out to Hunt theCalydonian Boar, tapestry, Walters Art Museum
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Meleager plate
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Meleager plate (detail)
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Renaissance sculpture of Meleager by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, who was known by his contemporaries as L'Antico. V&A Museum.
References
- ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0.
- ^ Homer, Iliad 9.529–99
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.9.16
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.9.16; Antoninus Liberalis, 2 as cited in Nicander's Metamorphoses
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.8.2; Hyginus, Fabulae 14 & 171
- ^ Antoninus Liberalis, 2 as cited in Nicander's Metamorphoses
- ^ Hesiod, Ehoiai fr. 98 as cited in Berlin Papyri, No. 9777
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 70 & 99
- ^ Kerenyi 1959: Genealogical table F, p. 372.
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 171; Apollodorus, 1.8.2
- ^ Apollodorus, 1.8.2
- Karl Kerenyi, The Heroes of the Greeks, 1959:119 note 673.
- ^ There were two further brothers, Thyreus, the "porter", and Klymenos, the "famous"—though Meleager is by far the most renowned of the four—and two sisters, Gorge and Deianira (Kerenyi 1959:199 and Genealogical table G, p. 375).
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 244
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 239 & 249
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 174
- ^ Or perhaps his half-sister, if Dionysus was the real father of Deianira, as Apollodorus, 1.8.1, would have it; Oeneus himself was "to judge by his name a double of the wine-god", as Kerenyi observes (Kerenyi 1959:199).
- ^ Scholia on Iliad 21.194, noted by Kerenyi 1959:180 note 103.
- ^ "Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, BOOK XXXVII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES., CHAP. 11.—AMBER: THE MANY FALSEHOODS THAT HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT IT". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
Sources
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/38px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png)
- Bacchylides Fr 5.93
- Apollonius Rhodius, ArgonauticaI, 190–201.
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca I, viii, 1–3.
- MetamorphosesVIII, 269–525.
External links
- The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Meleager)
Media related to Meleager at Wikimedia Commons