Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

To destroy Artemis’s boar, Oeneus summoned the greatest hunters of Greece. Among those who came were Meleager son of Oeneus (and of Althaea), Theseus, Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Castor and Polydeuces, Idas and Lynceus, Admetus, Ancaeus, and—crucially—Atalanta daughter of Iasus (or Schoeneus), the Arcadian (or Boeotian) huntress raised in the wild. Apollodorus lists a full muster; the tradition treats the Calydonian hunt as a pan-Hellenic assembly second only to the Argonautic voyage and the Trojan War. The hunters surrounded the beast. Several were wounded or killed; Ancaeus the Arcadian fell to its tusks when he pressed too boldly. Atalanta was the first to draw blood, striking the boar with an arrow. Meleager then closed and killed it. Because Atalanta had drawn first blood—and because Meleager loved her—he awarded her the hide (and the head) as the prize of honor. The gift inflamed Meleager’s maternal uncles, the sons of Thestius (Althaea’s brothers). They protested that a woman should not take the trophy while men of the blood were present, and they seized the hide from Atalanta. Meleager, enraged on her behalf, killed his uncles. That murder is the hinge to Althaea’s revenge and Meleager’s death (next entry). The hunt thus ends not in clean triumph but in kin-strife sparked by the prize given to the huntress.