Atalanta

tidalwave

New Member
The myth of Atalanta is probably one of my all time favorites and no one I know has actually heard of it so I was curious what your thoughts are on one of the few female heroes in Greek mythology, and the way her story ends. Also what versions have you read?
 

Nadai

Active Member
Atalanta was an Arkadian huntress who was favored by Artemis. From birth she was suckled by a she-bear and afterwards found and raised by hunters.
She swore to Artemis to defend her virginity and, when two Centaurs burst into her grove, killed them with her arrows. She traveled with the Argonauts, and defeated the hero Peleus in wrestling at the funeral games of King Pelias.

When the Kalydonian Boar was sent by Artemis to punish King Oineus, Atalanta was the first hunter to draw blood from it. If I'm not mistaken, Meleager took credit for killing it, but Atalanta was the first to wound it and so was awarded its hide which she dedicated to Artemis. Meleager's uncles were angry that she was awarded the hide so they rose up against her but she killed them.
Ovid writes about her in Metamorphosis. She was supposed to be so fast that no one could catch her. Her father begged her to marry and so she agreed on the condition that she would only marry the man who could beat her in a foot race. Men from all over came to compete for her hand. The losers were put to death. One day Hippomenes came to compete for her hand. Atalanta fell in love with him instantly and hoped that he would drop out of the race because she didn't want to see him put to death, she knew he would lose. But Hippomenes was in love with her and refused to back down. Instead he prayed to Aphrodite that she would allow love to win. Aphrodite provided Hippomenes with golden apples. During the last lap of the race Hippomenes was behind Atalanta. He dropped the apple and its shining gold skin caught her eye. She stopped to pick it up and Hippomenes was able to catch up with her. The golden apple weighed her down but she still got ahead of Hippomenes again and so he dropped the second apple. She stopped again to pick it up. She got ahead of him again and so he dropped the third just before she could finish. She stopped and went back for the apple and Hippomenes won. Unfortunately Hippomenes was so happy to win the race that he forgot to thank Aphrodite for her help so she cursed him with misfortune. They ended up having sex at the foot of Artemis' temple. Artemis was upset, of course, and so she cursed them again and turned them into lions.
 

tidalwave

New Member
A lot of the versions I've read say she wasn't allowed to sail with the Argonauts and that Zeus turned them into lions, so I was curious what versions are most common
 

Nadai

Active Member
A lot of the versions I've read say she wasn't allowed to sail with the Argonauts and that Zeus turned them into lions, so I was curious what versions are most common
I'm not sure. That's a good question. Certainly something to look up.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
I've found some interesting interpretations of the meaning of Atalanta's name: Unswaying, Balanced, Equal in Weight; Equivalent To; and even Not Suffering Much.

There're basically two different versions of this character: an Arkadian [Arcadian] one and a Boiotian [Boeotian] one. The Arkadian was the daughter of Iasos and Periklymene (or of a certain, otherwise-unknown Mainalos - who bears the same name as another, more ancient Arkadian dude: one of the 50 sons of Lykaon, after whom Mainalos Town and Mt Mainalos were named, so I suspect that the name of Atalanta's father Mainalos simply means "a man from Mainalos"). After a race in Arkadia, she became the wife of the Arkadian prince Meilanion, who was her own cousin, or her father's cousin. The Boiotian Atalanta was the daughter of Skhoineus, son of Athamas and Themisto; after a race in the Boiotian Onkhestos, she became the wife of the Megarian prince Hippomenes. The Arkadian Atalanta's father had wanted a son and so was disappointed at her birth. He ordered one of his subjects to put her to death but the man tasked with this job instead took her up Mt Parthenion, the "Virgin Hill," and left her by the side of a well at the entrance of a cave. Shortly afterwards a bear, whose newborn cubs had been killed by hunters, happened by the place, took the human baby girl and suckled her. The same hunters who had killed the bear-cubs then stole the baby girl from her animal wet-nurse and raised her, naming her "the Unswaying One."

Apollodoros is the only ancient writer I know of who includes Atalanta in a list of Argonauts, and his Atalanta is the daughter of Skhoineus rather than the one who has a much broader mythology (although he claims that his Atalanta was also from Arkadia). Apollonios Rhodios' Argonautika says that Atalanta met Iason [Jason] at Mainalos, where she hospitably entertained him (perhaps because his mother was her cousin), giving him a spear as a gift in the hope that she might be able to join his expedition on the Argo. Because every other member of the crew was a man, however, Iason feared that strife would arise from jealousy over her, so he denied her enlistment to the group. After this expedition was over, Atalanta was generally received with scorn and hostility by the other hunters when Meleagros [Meleager] convened the Kalydonian Boar-Hunt. This wouldn't have made sense if she had, shortly beforehand, participated in the voyage to Colchis, because the individuals who were most vocal in their disdain of hunting with a woman were the Arkadians Kepheus and Ankaios, both of whom had been Argonauts. Nobody knew it at the time, but Ankaios was Atalanta's uncle and Kepheus was her great-uncle. Immediately after Atalanta had drawn first blood from the giant boar, Meleagros praised her aloud for it, asking his fellow hunters' acknowledgement of the feat. Ankaios then, in his over-zealousness to show himself better than this woman hunter, boasted that not even Artemis, who had sent the boar, could protect the monster from him, and he charged the tusked beast with his labrys (double-bladed axe). Though he was about as strong as Herakles, he was disembowelled in the process, failing to make it away from that encounter alive. In every ancient account of the aftermath of this story that I've read, Meleagros' maternal uncles were killed by Meleagros himself, either in battle in a civil war that broke out on account of the argument over the boarskin, or in a fit of rage for the same reason.


There is one version of Atalanta's life in which her concern was to avoid getting married rather than remaining a virgin as such, because the oracle of Delphi had warned her specifically against marriage. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, the god of Delphi prophesied to her, saying: "A husband will be your undoing, Atalanta: flee from the necessity of a husband! Nevertheless, you will not escape, and, still living, you will not be yourself." According to some accounts, some time before receiving this ominous message, Atalanta had already lost her virginity either to King Talaos of Argos or to the war-god Ares. In one version she had a liaison with each of these guys in close succession, and from one of the encounters became pregnant with a son whom, upon his birth, similarly to her own experience in infancy, she abandoned on Mt Parthenion. Statius says that her devotion to Artemis began only after this event. Shepherds found the baby boy on Parthenion and raised him, naming him Parthenopaios, after the place at which he had been exposed. He grew up to become one of the Seven Against Thebes, who perished while trying to regain the throne of Thebes for Polyneikes. (Parthenopaios' brother Adrastos, another son of Talaos, was also one of these Seven and was Polyneikes' father-in-law.) As a result of Atalanta's encounters with both Talaos and Ares, no one was quite sure which of the two was the real father of Parthenopaios. Hyginus, however, claims that Parthenopaios' father was Meleagros, while other versions call him a legitimate son of Talaos by his own wife Lysimakhe, or even yet the legitimate son of Atalanta by her own husband Meilanion. Tlesimenes (one of the Epigonoi, who avenged the Seven Against Thebes ten years after the tragic battle between Polyneikes and Eteokles), who usually occurs as a son of Parthenopaios, is otherwise said to have been the son of Meilanion and Atalanta. Propertius seems to imply that the two Centaurs, named Rhoikos and Hylaios, who were killed by Atalanta had actually tried to rape her after she'd gotten married to Meilanion, and also that Hylaios had severely wounded Meilanion using some kind of a stick or club.

As retribution for Meilanion forgetting to thank Aphrodite for her assistance in acquiring his bride, once while she and he were out hunting on Mt Parnassos, Atalanta and Meilanion were inflamed with desire for each other, of which they relieved themselves in Zeus' nearby sacred grove. So Zeus punished the couple by changing them into lions, and the same story is related of the Boiotian Atalanta and her husband Hippomenes. Ovid's Metamorphoses has the Titan-goddess Rhea as the punishing deity, who goes so far as to yoke the metamorphosed couple to her chariot and make them the "steeds" of her vehicle. (In Ovid's story Rhea appears in her Phrygian aspect as the mother-goddess Kybele, who generally has a thing for lions.) Nonnos, the most recent of the mythographers to mention the story, is the one who says that Artemis was responsible for the transformation. The commonest (and maybe oldest version?) traces the metamorphosis to Zeus and his temple.
 
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Misa

Member
Skhoineus/Schoneus's son was Clymenus/Klúmenos, making Atalanta the sister of the king of Arcadia (and/or Argos if his father is Teleus).

"Clymenus, son of Schoeneus, king of Arcadia, overcome by passion, lay with his daughter Harpalyce. When she gave birth, she served her son at a banquet. The father, realizing it, killed Harpalyce." - 206, Fables by Hyginus.

Sometimes Harpalyce was transformed into a bird called the chalkis (http://mythagora.com/encyctxt/subtextc/chalcis1.html ? night-bird, a bird that flies in its sleep and never wakes; its proximity induces sleep.)

Yet her mother was not named when she is a daughter of Schoneus, descendent of Aeolus and lover of Hippomenes (Schoeneus was son of Themisto and Poseidon or Athamas son of Aeolus, making Helle her great aunt and Phrixus her great uncle). So it could be that her mother is Clymene daughter of Minyas.

Clymene is very interesting because she was married to Iasus and thus mother of Atalanta.
Also to Cephalus (a daughter of Minyas/Clymene) and their son was Arcesius who married Chalcomedusa "copper guardian" and had Laertes who had Odysseus with Anticleia.
Phylacus was also the husband of a Clymene daughter of Minyas and father of Iphicles and Alcimede, the mother of Jason by Aeson and Poeas (Argonaut and Archer, father of Philoctetes the friend of Herakles)

Minyas and Deion were brothers sons of Aeolus and by Clymene the daughter of Minyas or Diomede the daughter of Xuthus (Aeolus's brother's daughter) he had both Cephalus and Phylacus who are, as above, listed as husbands of Clymene, daughter of Minyas.

This same Clymene, daughter of Minyas (if there were not multiple sisters of like confused names) also is said to be wife of Iasus (Iasion or Iasius) and the mother of Atalanta and Amphion (king of the Minyans of Orchomenus) who fathered Chloris who married Neleus and had the Argonaut Nestor. Chloris was friend to Thyia, who if she was not the daughter of Deucalion and Pyrrha was likely a daughter of the river Cephissus of Mount Parnassus near Orchomenus.

Iasus's father was Lycurgus king of Arcadia who is son of Aleus son of Apheidas son of Arcas son of Callisto and Zeus, who is the daughter of Lycaon and son of Pelasgus.

Homer, Odyssey : And I saw beauteous Khloris, whom once Neleus wedded because of her beauty, when he had brought countless gifts of wooing. Youngest daughter was she of Amphion, son of Iasos, who once ruled mightily in Orkhomenos of the Minyai. And she was queen of Pylos, and bore to her husband glorious children, Nestor, and Khromios, and lordly Periklymenos, and besides these she bore noble Pero, a wonder to men."
 
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