and bolts of lightning issued from his mouth,
and when he exhaled, trees turned black and died.
Now he destroys the grain while it is growing,
and now it is a field of ripened wheat
some farmer has occasion to lament;
the mills and granaries await in vain
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their promised harvests. He destroys the grapes
in weighty clusters with their trailing vines
and the leafy olive’s berry-laden branches.
He raged against the herds of cattle too,
and neither herdsmen nor their dogs were able
to guard them, nor the bulls defend their own.
Folks fled the countryside and thought themselves
safe only when inside a city’s walls,
till Meleager with his chosen band
of youths assembled, desirous of glory:
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Leda’s twin boys, one famous for his boxing,
the other skilled as an equestrian;
Jason, the world’s first sailor; Theseus
and Pirithoüs, a single-minded pair;
Meleager’s uncles; the sons of Thestius;
Lyncaeus and swift Idas, who were sons
of Aphareius; and Caeneus, who
was no more a woman; fierce Leucippus;
Acastus, famous for his javelin,
and Hyppothous, with Dryas, and the son
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of Amyntour, and Phoenix, with the two
sons of Actor; Phylius of Elis;
the brothers Telamon and Peleus
(the father of magnificent Achilles)
were neither of them absent, nor the son
of Pheres nor Boeotian Iolaüs;
and likewise present were Eurytion
the diligent, and rapid Echion,
and Lelex the Locrian; Panopeus
and Hyleus and fierce Hippasus too,
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and Nestor in his prime, and those sent by
Hippocoon from ancient Amyclae;
the father of Penelope’s beloved;
Arcadian Ancaeus and the son
of Ampyx, famous for his prophecies;
the son of Oecleus, who was as yet
unruined by his wife; and finally,
the pride of Arcadia’s Mount Lycaeus,
Tegean Atalanta: at her neck,
a polished buckle kept her garments fastened;
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her hair was gathered in a single knot,
a style that was simplicity itself.
The maiden held a bow in her left hand,
and from her shoulder swung an ivory
quiver, whose arrows clattered as she walked.
So much for her attire: as for looks,
it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say
that she was somewhat girlish for a boy
and really rather boyish for a girl.
As soon as our hero saw her face,
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he ached for what the gods would not allow,
and wasted by love’s hidden fires, said:
“Oh, fortunate, the fellow that she chooses—
if she should choose one.”
But the occasion
and his own sense of decency forbade
all further speech: a far, far greater task—
this mighty contest—summons him to action.
The scene: an old-growth forest, never cut,
which, rising from a plain, looks down upon
fields sloping off in mild declivity.
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The men arrive: while some spread out the nets,
others unleash the dogs, and others still,
pursuing danger, start to track the beast.
Within that forest was a hollow, soaked
by constant rain: the pliant willow grew
upon its swampy floor, accompanied
by sedge and osier, tall rushes and short reeds:
out of this dell, the boar came hurtling
against his foes in furious assault
as lightning issues from colliding clouds,
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overwhelming the whole grove with his attack,
for the trees came down as he crashed into them.
The young men raise a cry and hold their spears
with the broad, glinting tips aimed at the beast
who rushes them and strews the hounds about
as they attempt to block his frenzied charge,
obliquely sweeping at them with his tusks.
Echion hurled the first spear, but in vain:
it struck and left a maple slightly wounded;
the next seemed sure to stick in the boar’s back,
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and would have done so—had not Jason thrown
with so much force it overshot its mark:
Mopsus, the son of Ampyx, cried, “O Phoebus,
if I once worshiped and still worship you,
allow me what I ask for: let my spear
attain its goal unerringly!”
The god
complied, so far as he was able to;
the blow was struck, but left the boar unwounded:
Diana snatched the spear tip in midflight,
and the now pointless shaft flew on its way.
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The beast was stirred to anger by the blow
and burned more fiercely than the lightning does:
his eyes glittered and his exhalations blazed,
and as a stone slung from a catapult
seeks out a wall or tower full of soldiers,
just so that bloody-minded pig deployed
his overwhelming force against the men.
Now Pelagon and Hippalmus, who held
the right flank, were bowled over by his charge;
companions snatched them both out of harm’s way,
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but Enaesimus, son of Hippocoon
could not escape the boar’s death-dealing blows;
while timidly preparing to turn tail,
he was hamstrung, and his legs collapsed
beneath him.
And Nestor of Pylos, too,
might well have died before the Trojan War,
had he not had the strength to use his spear
to vault himself into a nearby oak,
from whose convenient branches he looked down
in safety at the enemy below.
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Now having sharpened up its blunted tusks
against the oak that Nestor nestled in,
and confident of its refurbished weapons,
the beast was out for blood: raking its snout,
it savages the thigh of Hippasus.
And now the Gemini (not yet promoted
to constellations, being brothers still),
conspicuous both, both mounted upon steeds
whiter than snow, both fiercely brandishing
great javelins that quivered in the air—
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for sure they would have dealt it a great wound,
had not the beast retreated to a thicket
impervious to horses and to spears.
Telamon followed, eager and incautious,
and tripping over a projecting root
fell flat upon his face.
While Peleus
was helping him get up, swift Atalanta
drew back her bowstring smartly and released
an arrow which, though high, creased the boar’s back
and pricked it slightly, right beneath the ear;
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a little blood now trickled down its bristles.
She took no greater pleasure in her hit
than Meleager did, who was the first
to see the blood and show it to the others:
“How manly of you!” he said. “You deserve
the honor and acclaim you will receive!”
The men all reddened with embarrassm
ent
and yelled encouragement to one another;
becoming braver from the noise they made,
they launched their spears together in a jumble
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that missed the mark they were intended for.
But look where Arcas, raging, rushes off
to meet his fate, armed with a two-edged axe:
“Now you will learn how the weapons of a man
surpass those of a woman,” Arcas said.
“Stand back now, fellows, leave the job to me:
why, even if Diana could protect
the beast with her own weapons, nonetheless,
I would destroy him with my strong right hand!”
Swollen by such magniloquence, he rose
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and hoisting high his double-headed axe
above his head, he gripped it with both hands
and stood on tiptoes, poised to bring it down;
but the boar anticipated his next move
and looking for the fastest way to kill him,
drove both its tusks into his private parts.
Ancaeus fell, and his intestines spilled
like a great ball of thread unraveling
all bloody, and the earth was stained with his gore.
The son of Ixion, Pirithoüs,
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was next of them to face the enemy,
shaking the hunting spear in his right hand.
“Don’t get too close to it!” warned Theseus.
“You who are dearer to me than my soul,
my other half! For heroes are permitted
to do their acts of valor from afar;
learn from Ancaeus how rash courage fares!”
He spoke and cast his heavy, bronze-tipped spear;
though hurled with force and with good augury,
it ran into an oak tree’s leafy branch.
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And then the son of Aeson threw his spear
which, by an accident, turned from its mark
to fall among the pack of hunting dogs
and pin one by its privates to the ground.
But Meleager, son of Oeneus,
achieved a very different result:
the first of his two spears fell short to ground,
the second struck the boar right in its back,
and as it raged and spun itself around,
it jetted hissing spume mixed with fresh blood;
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the giver of the wound goaded his foe,
then drove his splendid spear into its heart.
His comrades testify to their great joy
by making a commotion with their mouths,
crowding around to press the victor’s hand,
and gazing in wonder at the savage beast
which takes up so much room upon the earth
that even now they are afraid to touch it,
although they dip their spears into its blood.
Then Meleager set his foot upon
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that ruinous head and said to Atalanta,
“Take, by my right, these spoils, Arcadian,
and let my glory come in part to you.”
He offered her the bristling pelt and head
distinguished for the size of its curved tusks.
The giver of the gift was just as pleasing
to her as the gift was.
An envious murmur
arises from the ranks of the companions:
shaking their fists, the sons of Thestius
[who happen to be Meleager’s uncles,
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the brothers of his mother, Althaea]
raise a great ruckus: “Let it go now, woman,
do not usurp the prizes rightly ours,
and do not think too highly of your beauty:
your lover may not always be so near.”
They seize his gifts, denying him the right
to offer them to anyone he chooses.
That son of Mars cannot endure such treatment,
and grinding his teeth in anger, he cries out,
“You scavengers of someone else’s honors!
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Now you will learn how great a difference
there is between an action and a threat!”
And without warning, thrusts his wicked blade
into the fearful heart of Plexippus.
While Toxeus considers what to do,
wanting to avenge his brother’s murder,
but scared of sharing in his brother’s fate,
he has but little time to think it over:
the blade still warm from slaughtering the one
is soon reheated in the other’s blood.
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Althaea was already in the temple
thanking the gods for her son’s victory
when she saw her brothers’ corpses carried in.
Now Meleager’s mother beat her breasts
and raised a lamentation audible
throughout the city; she at once replaced
the golden robes she wore with mourning weeds.
But when she learned who was the murderer,
her grief left her completely, and she turned
from weeping to a desire for revenge.
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When Althaea was in the throes of labor,
the Threefold Sisters dropped a block of wood
into the fire; and as they wove the threads
of life beneath their fingertips, they sang,
“We give an equal span of time to you
and to this piece of wood, O newborn babe.”
As soon as their prophetic recitation
was over and the Fates had disappeared,
the mother snatched the branch out of the fire
and sprinkled it with water. Many years
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it lay within its secret hiding place,
and guarded there, it guarded you, young man.
She brought the piece of wood out now and ordered
her servants to supply the gummy pine
and kindling bits, then lit the cruel flames.
And then she tried—four times—to thrust the branch
into the fire, and drew back each time;
mother and sister strove with one another
and those two names were tugging at one heart.
Often she turned pale, thinking of the crime
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she wanted to commit—and just as often
her eyes took on the color of her rage.
Now she resembled some unfeeling menace,
and now you would have thought her pitiful;
and when her angry heart had stopped her tears,
her tears would flow again; as when a ship,
driven in one direction by the wind
and in the other by an opposing tide,
feels those two equal forces struggling,
and yields herself uncertainly to both;
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that was Althaea, wandering between
wavering passions; now her burning rage
is stifled, now it’s started up again.
The sister, nonetheless, began to win,
and so that blood might pacify the shades
of her own blood, her brothers, she resolves
to do a pious deed, impiously.
For when that fire had blazed up, she said,
“Let this be the cremation of my womb!”
as she stood before her brothers’ biers,
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with the deadly piece of wood in her grim hand,
the miserable woman raised a cry:
“Now turn your faces to our dreadful rites,
O Threefold Goddesses, O Gracious Ones!
Avenging one abomination, I
commit another: death must expiate death,
crime be added onto crime, burial
to burial, until the weight of woe
accumul
ated overwhelms at last
this impious household! Shall fortunate
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Oeneus rejoice in his son’s victory?
Shall Thestius mourn? Better you both grieve.
“And you now, brothers, dead so recently,
appreciate the office I perform;
accept the sacrifice prepared for you
by your own sister at such dreadful cost,
the wicked tribute of a mother’s womb.
“Oh, god! What am I rushing into here?
Brothers, forgive a mother’s wavering,
my hands rebel from what they have begun!
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Yes, I admit that he deserves to die,
but it displeases me to do the deed.
“Shall he then walk away from this, unpunished,
alive, a victor, swollen with his triumph,
inheriting the realm of Calydon
while your thin ashes lie in icy darkness?
But I could not endure that. Let him die,
the criminal, and with him take the hopes
his father had for him and for his kingdom.
“But where are my maternal feelings? Where
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is that devotion any parent has?
The pains I bore until my son was born?
“O would that you had died in infancy,
when that first fire blazed up in my sight!
Mine were the gifts that you have conquered by;
of your own merit you deserve to die!
Now pay the penalty for what you’ve done;
twice I have given you the gift of life,
once at birth, once when I snatched the branch
out of the fire; now return the gift
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or put me with my brothers in the grave!
“But I cannot accomplish what I wish for.
What is my problem? Here before my eyes
is the image of my brothers’ bloody wounds,
and now the mother in me melts my heart.
“Oh, wretched me! It is a wickedness
that you shall win, my brothers, but you shall!
Provided that you offer me the solace
I give you now, and let me follow you!”
She turned away and with a trembling hand
730
flung the funereal torch into the fire;
and then it gave—or seemed to give—a groan,
as it burned in flames that bent away from it.
All unaware of that far-distant fire,
Meleager felt his viscera consumed
by hidden flames and bore great suffering
with courage, although he was grieved to die
far from a battlefield; Ancaeus seemed
most fortunate in dying as he did.
He cries out to his superannuated
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father, his brothers, his devoted sisters;
and, groaning, to his wife and bedmate; then,
summoning up his last breath, calls upon
his mother, as it happened.
Flames rose and fell