According to legend, Atalanta’s success in the Calydonian boar hunt prompted a reconciliation with her father, Schoeneus or Iasus. Like all fathers of ancient Greece, real or fictional, Schoeneus or Iasus had a social responsibility to find his daughter a husband. Yet Atalanta spurned wedlock, possibly because she had been warned against it by an oracle, or fortune-teller. The gods rarely tolerated women who refused to marry, so to appease the gods and her father, she agreed to marry on one condition. The man she married would first have to beat her in a footrace, but the losers would be killed.
Atalanta, who was the fastest mortal on earth, always won the races, even when she gave her opponents a head start. The death toll of failed suitors mounted. Finally Hippomenes (or Melanion in some versions), who was in love with the beautiful Atalanta, took up the challenge.
Left: This painting by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577—1640) depicts the moment when Meleager awarded the boar’s head to Atalanta.
Meanwhile, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, had grown tired of Atalanta’s deadly game, and she gave Hippomenes three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, maidens who guarded a magical tree. During the race Hippomenes distracted Atalanta by rolling each apple just far enough ahead of her that she would stop to pick it up. By doing this three times, Atalanta slowed enough for Hippomenes to win the race.
Atalanta kept to her word and married Hippomenes.
The couple grew to love each other and all seemed well. Then one day Aphrodite, who had grown enraged because Hippomenes had failed to thank her properly for the golden apples, cast a spell on the newlyweds, causing them to make love in the temple of Zeus. The king of the gods saw the couple in his temple and as a punishment turned Hippomenes into a lion and Atalanta into a lioness.
Another version has it that the couple were caught in the temple of Cybele (Rhea), mother of the gods. She then turned the lovers into lions and hitched them to her chariot to serve her forever.
World History
