Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Atalanta, unwilling to marry, imposed a deadly contest: any suitor must race her; if he won, he might take her as wife; if he lost, he died. She outran and killed many. Melanion (Milanion), son of Amphidamas—or in some notices a different Arcadian youth—took counsel of Aphrodite. The goddess gave him three golden apples (from the Hesperides, or from a divine orchard Aphrodite could tap). During the race Melanion threw the apples one by one. Each time Atalanta stooped to pick up the glittering fruit, he gained ground; on the third delay he reached the finish first and won her. They married. Later, overcome by passion, they entered a sanctuary they should not have defiled—Apollodorus says the precinct of Zeus, or in related tradition a shrine of Cybele/Rhea—and were transformed into lions. Lions, the Greeks said, do not mate with each other: the metamorphosis punished their sacrilege with a sterile pairing. Ovid’s famous retelling substitutes Hippomenes for Melanion and elaborates Cybele’s anger and the lion change; that is Roman poetic transmission of the same race-and-apples core. The Greek catalogue entry keeps Melanion as the victor and Aphrodite as the giver of the apples that undo the virgin huntress’s condition.