Meleāger
（
Μελέαγρος).
1.
The son of Oeneus of Calydon and Althaea, husband of Cleopatra (see
Idas), one of the most celebrated heroes of Greek legend. He took part
in the expedition of the Argonauts, and brought about the celebrated chase of the Calydonian
boar (see
Oeneus), to which he invited the most
renowned heroes of the time, Admetus, Amphiaraüs, Iason, Idas, Lynceus, Castor and
Pollux, Nestor , Theseus, and Pirithous, Peleus, Telamon, and others. Many lost their lives,
till at last Meleager slew the monster. However, Artemis thereupon stirred up a furious
strife between the Calydonians and the Curetes who dwelt at Pleuron, about the head and skin
of the
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Meleager. (From a Painting at Pompeii.)
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boar, the prize of victory. The Calydonians were victorious as long as Meleager
fought at their head; but when he slew the brother of his mother, she invoked a terrible
curse on him, and he retired sullenly from the fray. The Curetes immediately forced the
Calydonians to retreat, and were already beginning to climb the walls of Calydon, when, at
the height of their distress, he yielded to the prayers of his wife, and again joined in the
fight to ward off destruction from the city; but he did not return alive, for the Erinys had
accomplished the curse of his mother. According to a later legend, the Moerae appeared to his
mother on the seventh day after his birth, and announced to her that her son would have to
die when a log of wood on the hearth was consumed by the flame; whereupon Althaea immediately
snatched the log from the fire and concealed it in a chest. At the Calydonian Hunt, Meleager
fell in love with
Atalanté (q. v.),
and gave her (who had inflicted the first wound) the prize, the skin of the animal
which he had killed. He slew the brothers of his mother, the sons of Thestius, when they were
lying in wait for the virgin to rob her of the boar's hide. Overcome by pain at the death of
her brothers, Althaea set fire to the log, and Meleager died a sudden death. His mother and
wife hanged themselves; his sisters wept so bitterly for Meleager, that Artemis for pity
changed them into guineahens (
μελεαγρίδες). Legends relate
that even in the nether world Meleager retained his dauntless courage; for when Heracles
descended to Hades, all the shades fled before him except Meleager and Medusa.
2.
A Greek epigrammatist of Gadara in Palestine, who flourished about B.C. 60. His collection
of epigrams, by himself and others, entitled
Stephanos (wreath), formed the
nucleus of the Greek anthology. Of his own poems there remain 131, in which amatory themes
are cleverly and wittily treated. See
Anthology.
