Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the Arcadian version preferred by Apollodorus’s main notice, Atalanta was the daughter of Iasus (son of Lycurgus) and Clymene. Iasus desired male heirs; when a girl was born he exposed her on Mount Parthenium. A she-bear—Artemis’s animal—came and suckled the infant. Hunters found the child, raised her among themselves, and she grew into a runner and huntress of unmatched speed and skill, devoted to Artemis and resolved to remain a virgin. She lived in the wild, killed centaurs who tried to force her (Rhoecus and Hylaeus in Apollodorus), and later joined the Calydonian boar hunt, where she drew first blood and received the hide from Meleager (catalogue entry 077). Some catalogues also place her among the Argonauts; Apollonius excludes her. The Boeotian strand makes her daughter of Schoeneus and sends her toward the footrace for marriage (next entry); Apollodorus treats Arcadian and Boeotian Atalantas as possibly one figure under two fathers, or as local doublets of the same huntress-type. The birth-and-exposure tale establishes her as Artemis’s fosterling: rejected by the father, nursed by the goddess’s beast, trained outside the city, and bound to chastity until a suitor (or Aphrodite’s apples) breaks that vow.