Site Library Library of Hellas

Fatal Boar Hunts, Fatal Loves: Meleager & Adonis

Athrpa is the Etruscan version of the Greek Atropos, the third of the Three Fates who decide a person's fate: Clotho, who spins the thread of one's life; Lachesis, who measures its length; and Atropos, who cuts it off with a pair of shears. The Etruscans, however, depicted Atropos, or Athrpa, as fixing the moment of death, not by cutting it short with a pair of scissors, but by hammering a nail into a door post - apparently a temple doorpost with calendar marks.

On either side of Atropos/Athrpa is a pair of lovers. On her right, beneath her hammer, sits young Adonis (Atunis), protectively embraced by his immortal lover, Aphrodite (Turan). On Athrpa's left, just beneath her fatal nail, stands Meleager (Meliacr) beside his beloved, Atalanta (Atlenta). Wrapped up in each other, these figures are oblivious of Athrpa and her fatal hammer. Being mortal, and unaware of their fate, three of them cannot see her. And, rather than being spectators of her act, the young men are its victims.

The nearest victim, standing immediately below her nail and bleeding just above his right elbow, is Meleager, still holding his hunting spear after leading the Trojan warriors on a hunt for the legendary Calydonian boar. He awarded its prized tusks and hide to his beloved Atalanta, seen here resting with her spear, who had earned it by being the first to land a blow that drew its blood.

MELEAGER, ATALANTA & THE CALYDONIAN BOAR

When Meleager was born, the Three Fates appeared before his mother, Queen Althaea of Calydon. Pointing to a log burning on the hearth, they told her Meleager would die as soon as it burned to ashes. To save her son, Althaea rushed to put out the fire. To make doubly sure he would never die, she hid the log in a chest, then buried the chest in a secret place.

So Meleager grew up to be a warrior, both mighty and invulnerable. He couldn't be killed so long as that log stayed locked and buried in that chest. As a young man he accompanied Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. But then he fell fatally in love with Atalanta, who was not only beautiful, but as strong and brave as any man. And that led to the fateful hunt for the Calydonian Boar.



In this detail from the top band of the famous Francois vase we see, not just any old boar hunt, but the hunting of the huge boar of Calydon. Because the king of that land, Oeneus, had failed to sacrifice to the virgin huntress Artemis, the goddess had sent this terrible beast to ravage his kingdom. "So huge was he," said Homer, "he had put many men on the sad fire for burning"(Iliad IX:546).

To save his kingdom, Oeneus called on the bravest heroes of Greece to come and kill the boar. He offered as a prize its tusks and hide. Among those who came were Theseus, Jason, Peleus, Nestor, and the fleet-footed virgin huntress Atalanta (a pretty obvious stand-in for Artemis herself). With her skin painted white in the custom of the ancient painters, Atalanta stands out as one of the few female figures on this otherwise all-male, all-black-figure vase. Beside her is Melanion (whose name means "black"), who later won HER as a prize in a footrace -- the first man to beat her, but only by tossing on the track three golden apples, given him by Aphrodite, that Atalanta stooped to gather. She wears a revealing robe, while most of the men wear animal hides. Her presence caused an uproar, with two hunters from her own land refusing to hunt with a woman, and the king's two brothers predicting disaster. Their objections were overriden by the king's married son, Meleager, whom Artemis had made fall in love with Atalanta. The result was a shambles.

Armed with javelins and boar-spears, battle-axes and bows and arrows, the horde of over-eager trophy-hunters, each hot to claim the great hide for himself, fell over each other in mad pursuit of the boar. To restore some order to the chase, Meleager organized them into a half-moon search party, not unlike the semi-circular band of figures we see marching round the krater's rim. Note on the vase the two javelin throwers in the middle: they use the same type of finger-thong used by Olympic javelin throwers to impart spin, accuracy and distance to their throws. Before them, bending on one knee, is a Scythian archer in his tall pointed Scythian cap. Before him strides Atalanta, here bearing a boar-spear instead of the bow and arrow which the poets say she used -- first to shoot two centaurs (fellow hunters who tried to rape her in the woods) and then to wound the boar, to save two other hunters (Peleus and Telamon) who, tripped up by a tree root, had fallen before the charging boar.

Others were not so lucky. Two hunters were killed by the boar, another hamstrung by it, a fourth (Nestor) driven up a tree. On the vase we see one hunter lying dead beneath the boar, while before it lies a dead dog labelled "Rouser" -- doubtless the lead hound who found and aroused the boar. Next come Meleager and Peleus, pointing their spears at the boar's snout, followed by Rouser's partner, a long hot-dog-shaped hound named "Chaser." According to the poets, javelins hurled by Jason, Theseus, and other heroes missed or merely grazed the boar. Peleus' spear also missed the boar and killed his countryman Eurytion. More mayhem, not shown here, ensued. One hero swung his battle-axe straight at the charging boar, but not fast enough: in an instant he lay castrated and disembowelled. At last, blinded by an arrrow, the boar was killed by Meleager, who skinned it and in a lover's haze fondly awarded its prized tusks and hide to Atalanta. When his outraged uncles protested, in a lover's rage Meleager killed them both.

When news of her brothers' deaths arrived at the palace, Queen Althaea was torn on the horns of a terrible dilemma: Should she avenge the death of her brothers by killing their killer? Or should she save her son's life? Rage tipped the scales. From its secret hiding place she took the fatal log and tossed it on the fire.

When the last of its embers turned to ash, Atropis cut the thread of Meleager's life. And Althaea hanged herself. All this, to soothe the savage breast of Artemis?

ADONIS & APHRODITE

Returning to our prophetic Etruscan hand mirror, we notice Adonis sits, or nearly sits, in Aphrodite's lap. Renaissance painters like Carracci and Veronese would also show Adonis lying in her lap -- an ironic reminder that he would end up dying in it. Here's how it happened:

Because the King of Cyprus boasted that his daughter Smyrna was more beautiful than Aphrodite, the goddess punished him by making Smyrna fall in love with him. She got him drunk and got into his bed and got herself pregnant by him. When the king found out, he grabbed a sword and chased her from the palace. Just when he caught up with her and was about to kill her with his sword, Aphrodite changed her into a myrrh tree -- which split in two from the king's descending sword. Out tumbled baby Adonis.

Aphrodite snatched him up and hid him in a chest, which she gave to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, asking her to hide it in a dark place. Overcome with curiosity, Persephone opened the chest. Struck by his beauty, she took Adonis to her palace and brought him up, then made him her lover. When Aphrodite found out, she complained to Zeus. But Zeus, who knew what was going on between the two women, refused to intervene. He handed the case over to the muse Calliope, who decided the two goddesses should share Adonis equally. Dividing the year into three trimesters, she said Adonis should stay the winter months in the Kingdom of the Dead with Persephone, spend the next trimester making love with Aphrodite, and then take the third one off all by himself.

Aphrodite would have none of it. She complained that the Three Fates had assigned her just one task: making love. So, flaunting her charms in her magic girdle, she seduced Adonis into spending the winter idling in Hades, and the rest of the year making love with her.

Furious, Persephone went to tell Aphrodite's lover Ares how he had been replaced by a mere mortal, and a rather girlish one too! Ares immediately disguised himself as a boar and went off to kill Adonis.

This painting by Titian shows Adonis leaving to go out on the hunt one more time, as Aphrodite pleads with him not to, for she has had a premonition of danger. She warns him not to hunt any creature that can turn against him. Ignoring her warning, Adonis ran off with his hounds for the thrill of a kill. They soon roused a boar and Adonis chased and shot him,

But he only wounded and maddened the beast, who charged him and tore him to pieces. Aphrodite watched him die, his blood draining out upon the ground. From it, blood-red flowers sprang up, only to be torn apart and scattered by the wind across the land. Hence it is called "windflower," or "anemone."

The Dying Adonis. Neither sarcophagus nor ash urn, containing neither bones nor ashes, this largely solid piece was probably designed as a sumptuous lid for a large Etruscan ash urn. And not just for a young man. But for a man or a woman (unisex), especially if cast in multiple copies from a mold. Etruscan ladies wouldn't mind having an Adonis like this atop their ashes, judging from the popularity of hand mirrors depicting Aphrodite embracing her only mortal lover. Also, considering he's just been gored to death by a wild boar, our toy boy's body is in remarkably good condition -- as third-century BC Etruscans hoped their own might be in the afterlife? Is that gash on Adonis' left leg by design, or from a crack in the clay? Dog lovers: Note the lovely faithful hound; licking a wound of his own from that same boar.

TYCHE & OEDIPUS
Adonis & Aphrodite

Fatal Boar Hunts, Fatal Loves: Meleager & Adonis

A Valentine for Camille Flammarion
The Met returns its Euphronios vase!
Camille Flammarion: Romantic Astronomer
The Fountains of Enceladus
The Eye of God
Is Ganymede the Boy from Marathon Bay?
THE ANCIENT OLYMPIEIA FESTIVAL AT ATHENS
Which satyr would you choose...
The Marathon Boy and the Satyr
Contrapossto from Praxiteles to Rubens and Playboy
The Afternoon of a Faun
The Dancing Satyr - A Lost Bronze of Praxiteles?
Hermes, The Liar Who Invented the Lyre
Inanna, Queen of Uruk
Inanna Adored: The Uruk Vase
The Moon-God Nanna-Sin Visits his Ziggurat at Ur
Apollo Sauroktonos, or How the Romans Killed the Lizard-Killer
Jacob's Ladder
Inanna and the Harrowing of Hell
Lilith: Wild Demon of Sex and Death
DUMUZI FEEDS INANNA'S SHEEP
The Sun God in his Dragon Boat
A Stairway to Heaven: The Ziggurat at Ur
Lassalle's Post-Modern Male Torso
Brancusi's Torsos: Pure Platonic Forms?
Brancusi on Men and Women: Take the Tate Test?
Four Gods Greet the Rising Sun God
Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo
Culsu & Vanth Lead the Dead into Hades
Aita, the Etruscan Hades
Socrates' Apology: The Background
A FATEFUL CHARIOT RACE: The STORY of PELOPS and OENOMAUS