8.
Reigning over Calydon, Oeneus was the first who received a vine-plant from
Dionysus.1
He married Althaea, daughter of Thestius, and begat Toxeus, whom he slew with his own hand
because he leaped over the ditch.2 And besides Toxeus
he had Thyreus and Clymenus, and a daughter Gorge, whom Andraemon married, and another
daughter Deianira, who is said to have been begotten on Althaea by Dionysus. This Deianira
drove a chariot and practised the art of war, and Hercules wrestled for her hand with
Achelous.3
[2]
Althaea had also a son Meleager,4 by Oeneus, though they
say that he was begotten by Ares. It is said that, when he was seven days old, the Fates
came and declared that Meleager should die when the brand burning on the hearth was burnt
out. On hearing that, Althaea snatched up the brand and deposited it in a chest.5 Meleager grew up
to be an invulnerable and gallant man, but came by his end in the following way. In
sacrificing the first fruits of the annual crops of the country to all the gods
Oeneus forgot Artemis alone. But she in her wrath sent a boar of extraordinary size and
strength, which prevented the land from being sown and destroyed the cattle and the people
that fell in with it. To attack this boar Oeneus called together all the noblest men of
Greece, and promised that to him who should
kill the beast he would give the skin as a prize. Now the men who assembled to hunt the
boar were these6:— Meleager, son of Oeneus; Dryas, son of Ares; these
came from Calydon; Idas and Lynceus, sons of Aphareus, from Messene; Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus and Leda,
from Lacedaemon; Theseus, son of Aegeus, from
Athens; Admetus, son of Pheres, from Pherae;
Ancaeus and Cepheus, sons of Lycurgus, from Arcadia; Jason, son of Aeson, from Iolcus; Iphicles, son of Amphitryon, from
Thebes; Pirithous, son of Ixion, from
Larissa; Peleus, son of Aeacus, from Phthia;
Telamon, son of Aeacus, from Salamis; Eurytion,
son of Actor, from Phthia; Atalanta, daughter
of Schoeneus, from Arcadia; Amphiaraus, son of
Oicles, from Argos. With them came also the
sons of Thestius. And when they were assembled, Oeneus entertained them for nine days; but
on the tenth, when Cepheus and Ancaeus and some others disdained to go hunting with a
woman, Meleager compelled them to follow the chase with her, for he desired to have a
child also by Atalanta, though he had to wife Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa.
When they surrounded the boar, Hyleus and Ancaeus were killed by the brute, and
Peleus struck down Eurytion undesignedly with a javelin. But Atalanta was the first to
shoot the boar in the back with an arrow, and Amphiaraus was the next to shoot it in the
eye; but Meleager killed it by a stab in the flank, and on receiving the skin gave it to
Atalanta. Nevertheless the sons of Thestius, thinking scorn that a woman should get the
prize in the face of men, took the skin from her, alleging that it belonged to them by
right of birth if Meleager did not choose to take it.
[3]
But Meleager in a rage slew the sons of Thestius and gave the skin to Atalanta. However,
from grief at the slaughter of her brothers Althaea kindled the brand, and Meleager
immediately expired.
But some say that Meleager did not die in that way,7 but that when the sons of Thestius
claimed the skin on the ground that Iphiclus had been the first to hit the boar, war broke
out between the Curetes and the Calydonians; and when Meleager had sallied out8 and slain
some of the sons of Thestius, Althaea cursed him, and he in a rage remained at home;
however, when the enemy approached the walls, and the citizens supplicated him to come to
the rescue, he yielded reluctantly to his wife and sallied forth, and having killed the
rest of the sons of Thestius, he himself fell fighting. After the death of
Meleager, Althaea and Cleopatra hanged themselves, and the women who mourned the dead man
were turned into birds.9
[4]
After Althaea's death Oeneus married Periboea, daughter of Hipponous. The author of the
Thebaid says that when Olenus was sacked, Oeneus received Periboea as a gift
of honor; but Hesiod says that she was seduced by Hippostratus, son of Amarynceus, and
that her father Hipponous sent her away from Olenus in Achaia to Oeneus, because
he dwelt far from Greece, with an injunction to
put her to death.10
[5]
However, some say that Hipponous discovered that his
daughter had been debauched by Oeneus, and therefore he sent her away to him when she was
with child. By her Oeneus begat Tydeus. But Pisander says that the mother of Tydeus was
Gorge, for Zeus willed it that Oeneus should fall in love with his own daughter.11
When Tydeus had grown to be a gallant man he was banished for killing, as some say,
Alcathous, brother of Oeneus; but according to the author of the
Alcmaeonidhis victims were the sons of Melas who had plotted against Oeneus, their
names being Pheneus, Euryalus, Hyperlaus, Antiochus, Eumedes, Sternops,
Xanthippus, Sthenelaus; but as Pherecydes will have it, he murdered his own brother
Olenias.12 Being arraigned
by Agrius, he fled to Argos and came to
Adrastus, whose daughter Deipyle he married and begat Diomedes.
Tydeus marched against Thebes with
Adrastus,13 and died of a wound which he received at the hand of
Melanippus.
[6]
But the sons of Agrius, to wit, Thersites,
Onchestus, Prothous, Celeutor, Lycopeus, Melanippus, wrested the kingdom from Oeneus and
gave it to their father, and more than that they imprisoned Oeneus in his lifetime and
tormented him.14 Nevertheless Diomedes afterwards came secretly with
Alcmaeon from Argos and put to death all the
sons of Agrius, except Onchestus and Thersites, who had fled betimes to Peloponnese; and as Oeneus was old, Diomedes gave the
kingdom to Andraemon who had married the daughter of Oeneus, but Oeneus himself he took
with him to Peloponnese. Howbeit, the sons of
Agrius, who had made their escape, lay in wait for the old man at the hearth of Telephus
in Arcadia, and killed him. But Diomedes conveyed
the corpse to Argos and buried him in the place
where now a city is called Oenoe after him.15 And having married Aegialia,
daughter of Adrastus or, as some say, of Aegialeus, he went to the wars against Thebes and Troy.
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1 Compare Hyginus, Fab. 129.
2 So Romulus is said to have killed Remus for leaping over the rising wall of Rome (Livy i.7.2).
3 See Apollod. 2.7.5, with the note.
4 The whole of the following account of the life and death of Meleager is quoted, with a few verbal changes and omissions, by Zenobius, Cent. v.33. The story is told by Bacch. 5.93ff., ed. Jebb; and, though without any express mention of the burning brand or of Meleager's death, by Hom. Il. 9.529-599. Compare Diod. 4.34; Ov. Met. 8.270ff.; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.481; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 46ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 146). It was made the theme of tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides. See Nauck, TGF, 2nd ed. (Leipsig, 1889), pp. 219ff., 525ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, ii.64ff.
5 For the story of the burning brand on which the life of Meleager depended, see also Aesch. Lib. 604ff.; Bacch. 5.136ff., ed. Jebb; Diod. 4.34.6ff.; Paus. 10.31.4; Ant. Lib. 2; Dio Chrysostom lxvii. vol. ii. p. 231, ed. L. Dindorf; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ix.534; Ov. Met. 8.445-525; Hyginus, Fab. 171, 174; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. ii.481; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 47 (First Vatican Mythographer 146). The story belongs to a widespread class of tales concerned with the “external soul,” or the belief that a person's life is bound up with an animal or object outside of his own body. See Balder the Beautiful, ii.94ff.
6 For lists of the heroes who hunted the Calydonian boar, see Ov. Met. 8.299ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 173.
7 The following account of the death of Meleager is substantially that of Hom. Il. 9.529ff.
8 From Calydon, then besieged by the Curetes.
9 The birds called in Greek meleagrides, guinea-fowl (Numida sp.). See Ant. Lib. 2; Ael., Nat. Anim. iv.42; Ov. Met. 8.533-546; Hyginus, Fab. 174; Pliny, Nat. Hist. x.74, xxxvii.40. Worshippers of Artemis strictly abstained from eating the bird; the reason of the abstention was known to the natives of Leros, one of the Sporades (Ael., Nat. Anim. iv.42). The birds were kept in the sanctuary of the Maiden (Artemis?) in that island, and were tended by the priests (Athenaeus xiv.71, p. 655 C). It is said that it was Artemis who turned the sisters of Meleager into birds by touching them with a rod, after which she transferred them to the island of Leros (Ant. Lib. 2) On the birds see D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Glossary of Greek Birds (Oxford, 1895), pp. 114ff.
10 Compare Diod. 4.35.1ff., according to whom Periboea alleged that she was with child by Ares. Sophocles wrote a tragedy on the subject; a few fragments of it remain (The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.216ff.).
11 Gorge was a daughter of Oeneus. See above, Apollod. 1.8.1; Paus. 10.38.5.
12 Compare Eustathius on Hom. Il. xiv.122, p. 971; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.114, 120; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, iii.38, frag. 799; Statius, Theb. i.401ff., with the commentary of Lactantius Placidus, pp. 47ff. ed. R. Jahnke. The accounts differ as to whom Tydeus killed, but they agree that he fled from Calydon to Adrastus at Argos, and that Adrastus purified him from the murder (Eustathius and Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiv.122, p. 971) and gave him his daughter to wife. Compare Apollodorus, iii.6.1.
13 See below, Apollod. 3.6.3ff.
14 With this and what follows compare Paus. 2.25.2; Scholiast on Aristoph. Ach. 418; Ant. Lib. 37; Hyginus, Fab. 175. The story furnished Euripides with the theme of a tragedy called Oeneus. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 536ff.
15 Compare Paus. 2.25.2.
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