The Meleagrides: Sisters of Meleager Become Birds

Catalogue ID: 05-local-and-lesser/150-meleagrides-birds-antoninus-ovid

Cycle: Local and lesser — Calydonian aftermath / bird metamorphosis

Version line: Antoninus Liberalis (Greek) + Ovid-labeled Roman enrichment — mourning sisters turned into meleagrides (guinea-fowl)

Sources: Antoninus Liberalis 2 (from Nicander); Ovid, *Metamorphoses* 8.533–546 (**Roman**—labeled); cf. Apollodorus, *Library* 1.8.3 (Meleager’s death without full bird list)

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/05-local-and-lesser/150-meleagrides-birds-antoninus-ovid.md

Characters

Althaea — dead brother (background)
Artemis — usual agent of the metamorphosis
Deianeira — sisters spared in common handbook strand
Dionysus — spare-agent in some versions
Meleagrides — sisters of Meleager; become guinea-fowl

Places

Argos — mourning and transformation

Themes

Narrative

When Althaea burned the brand and Meleager died, his sisters mourned without measure at Calydon (and over his body). Artemis (or Dionysus in a minority strand) pitied—or punished—their endless lament and changed them into birds called meleagrides (guinea-fowl), whose spotted plumage and crying recall mourning. Antoninus names several sisters (Eurymede, Melanippe, and others in the tradition); Gorge and Deianeira are often said to have been spared by Dionysus’s favor so Deianeira could enter Heracles’ story. Ovid’s brief Roman tableau has the sisters’ tears hardening into birds at the tomb while the goddess stops only two from transformation. Catalogue the bird aetiology apart from the hunt and the brand.