[242] § 176.
[243] Macbeth, IV, i. Consult.
[CHAPTER XVI]
THE FAMILY OF ÆTOLUS AND ITS CONNECTIONS
168. The Calydonian Hunt.[244] One of the heroes of the Argonautic expedition had been Meleager, a son of Œneus and Althæa, rulers of Calydon in Ætolia. His parents were cousins, descended from a son of Endymion named Ætolus, who had colonized that realm. By ties of kinship and marriage they were allied with many historic figures. Their daughter Dejanira had become, as we have already noted, the wife of Hercules; while Leda, the sister of Althæa, was mother of Castor and Pollux,[245] and of Clytemnestra and Helen, intimately concerned in the Trojan War.
When her son Meleager was born, Althæa had beheld the three Destinies, who, as they spun their fatal thread, foretold that the life of the child should last no longer than a certain brand then burning upon the hearth. Althæa seized and quenched the brand, and carefully preserved it while Meleager grew to boyhood, youth, and man's estate. It chanced, then, that Œneus, offering sacrifices to the gods, omitted to pay due honors to Diana; wherefore she, indignant at the neglect, sent a boar of enormous size to lay waste the fields of Calydon. Meleager called on the heroes of Greece to join in a hunt for the ravenous monster. Theseus and his friend Pirithoüs,[246] Jason, Peleus the father of Achilles, Telamon the father of Ajax, Nestor, then a youth, but who in his age bore arms with Achilles and Ajax in the Trojan War,[247]—these and many more joined in the enterprise. With them came, also, Atalanta, the daughter of Iasius, of the race of Callisto,—
Arcadian Atalanta, snowy-souled,
Fair as the snow and footed as the wind.[248]
A buckle of polished gold confined her vest, an ivory quiver hung on her left shoulder, and her left hand bore the bow. Her face blended feminine beauty with the graces of martial youth. Meleager saw and, with chivalric reverence, somewhat thus addressed her:
For thy name's sake and awe toward thy chaste head,
O holiest Atalanta! no man dares
Praise thee, though fairer than whom all men praise,
And godlike for thy grace of hallowed hair
And holy habit of thine eyes, and feet
That make the blown foam neither swift nor white,
Though the wind winnow and whirl it; yet we praise
Gods, found because of thee adorable
And for thy sake praiseworthiest from all men:
Thee therefore we praise also, thee as these,
Pure, and a light lit at the hands of gods.[249]