Calydonian boar hunt

 ( Greek Legendary Creatures ) 

King Oeneus ("wine man")Hard, p. 413; Kerényi, p. 115. of Calydon, an ancient city of west-central Greece north of the Gulf of Patras, held annual harvest sacrifices to the gods on the sacred hill. One year the king forgot to include Great "Artemis of the golden throne" in his offerings.Homer, Iliad 9.533ff.; the poet's concern is with Meleager's role in the battle begun over the boar's carcass, which embroiled Meleager and the Curetes, who were attacking his city of Calydon, rather than with the hunt itself, which he swiftly summarizes in a handful of lines. Insulted, Artemis, the "Lady of the Bow", loosed the biggest, most ferocious wild boar imaginable on the countryside of Calydon.

Ovid describes the boar as follows:Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.284–289.

A dreadful boar.—His burning, bloodshot eyes

seemed coals of living fire, and his rough neck

was knotted with stiff muscles, and thick-set

with bristles like sharp spikes. A seething froth

dripped on his shoulders, and his tusks

were like the spoils of Ind India. Discordant roars

reverberated from his hideous jaws;

and lightning—belched forth from his horrid throat—

scorched the green fields.

:— Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.284–289 (Brookes More translation)

Ovid goes on to say that the boar rampaged throughout the countryside, destroying vineyards and crops, forcing people to take refuge inside their city walls.Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.290–299.

According to Strabo, the boar was said to be the offspring of the Crommyonian Sow vanquished by Theseus.Strabo, Geographica 8.6.22.

Among those who responded were some of the Argonauts, Oeneus' own son Meleager, and, remarkably for the hunt's eventual success, one woman—the huntress Atalanta, the "indomitable", who had been suckled by Artemis as a she-bear and raised as a huntress, a proxy for Artemis herself (Kerenyi; Ruck and Staples). Artemis appears to have been divided in her motives, for it was also said that she had sent the young huntress because she knew her presence would be a source of division, and so it was: many of the men, led by Kepheus and Ankaios, refused to hunt alongside a woman. It was the smitten Meleager who convinced them.Euripides, fragment 520, noted by Kerényi, p. 119, with note 673. Nonetheless it was Atalanta who first succeeded in wounding the boar with an arrow, although Meleager finished it off, and offered the prize to Atalanta, who had drawn first blood. But the sons of Thestius, who considered it disgraceful that a woman should get the trophy where men were involved, took the skin from her, saying that it was properly theirs by right of birth, if Meleager chose not to accept it. Outraged by this,According to Diodorus Siculus, 4.34.4, "He had honoured a stranger woman above them and set kinship aside". Meleager slew the sons of Thestius and again gave the skin to Atalanta ( Bibliotheke). Meleager's mother, sister of Meleager's slain uncles, took the fatal brand from the chest where she had kept it (see Meleager) and threw it once more on the fire; as it was consumed, Meleager died on the spot, as the Fates had foretold. Thus Artemis achieved her revenge against King Oeneus.

During the hunt, Peleus accidentally killed his host, Eurytion. In the course of the hunt and its aftermath, many of the hunters turned upon one another, contesting the spoils, and so the Goddess continued to be revenged.Kerényi, p. 115. According to Homer "the goddess brought to pass much clamour and shouting concerning his head and shaggy hide, between the Curetes and the great-souled Aetolians."Homer, Iliad 9.547–549.

The boar's hide that was preserved in the Temple of Athena at Tegea in Laconia was reputedly that of the Calydonian Boar, "rotted by age and by now altogether without bristles" by the time Pausanias saw it in the second century CE.Pausanias, 8.47.2. He noted that the tusks had been taken to Rome as booty from the defeated allies of Mark Antony by Augustus;Pausanias, 8.46.1. "one of the tusks of the Calydonian boar has been broken", Pausanias reports, "the remaining one is kept in the gardens of the emperor, in a sanctuary of Dionysus, and is about half a Fathom long",Pausanias, 8.46.5. According to Mayor, pp. 142–143, such a tusk, almost a meter in length, would most likely have been a prehistoric elephant tusk. The Calydonian boar hunt was the theme of the temple's main pediment.

The table lists:For alphabetical lists of the hunters given by Pausanias, Hyginus, Ovid, and Apollodorus, see Parada, s.v. CALYDONIAN HUNTERS.

• Those seen by Pausanias on the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea,Pausanias, 8.45.6–7. as well as another hero, Ischepolis, mentioned by Pausanias.Pausanias, 1.42.6.
• Those listed by Latin mythographer Hyginus.Hyginus, Fabulae 173.
• Those noted in Ovid's list from the 8th Book of his Metamorphoses.Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.299—317, 360.
• Those listed by the mythographer Apollodorus.

• Erymanthian boar

• Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Aymard, J., Essai sur les chasses romaines, Paris 1951.
• Bacchylides, Odes, translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien. 1991. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History. translated by C. H. Oldfather, twelve volumes, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989. Online version by Bill Thayer.
• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books.
• Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae : Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing Company, 2007. .
• Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Kerényi, Karl (1959), The Heroes of the Greeks, Thames and Hudson, London, 1959.
• Adrienne Mayor, The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times, Princeton University Press, 2011. .
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, Brookes More, Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume I: Books 1-8. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 42. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977, first published 1916. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Parada, Carlos, Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology, Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993. .
• Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Rose, Carol, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth, W. W. Norton, 2001. .
• Ruck, Carl A.P., and Danny Staples, 1994. The World of Classical Myth, p. 196
• Strabo, Geographica, translated by Horace Leonard Jones; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. (1924). LacusCurtis, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Books 6–14.
• Swinburne, Algernon Charles. "Atalanta in Calydon"*