Dictionary
MELEAGER	100.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Son of (Eneus of Calydon and of Althaea, husband of Cleopatra (see, IDAS), one of the most celebrated heroes of Greek legend. He took part in the enterprise of the Argonauts and brought about the celebrated chase of the Calydonian boar (see OENEUS), to which he invited the most renowned heroes of the time, Admetus, Amphiaraus, Jason, Idas, Lynceus, Castor and Pollux, Nestor, Theseus and Pirithous, Peleus, Telamon, and others. Many lost their lives, till at last Meleager slew the monster. However, Artemis thereupon stirred up furious strife between the Calydonians and the Curetes (who dwelt at Pleuron) about the head and skin of the boar, the prize of victory. The Calydonians were victorious, as long as Meleager fought at their head; but when he slew the brother of his mother, she uttered a terrible curse on him, and he retired sullenly from the fray. The Curetes immediately forced the Calydonians to retreat, and were already beginning to climb the walls of Calydon, when, at the height of their distress, he yielded to the prayers of his wife and again joined in the fight to ward of destruction from the city; but he did not return alive, for the Erinys had accomplished the curse of his mother. According to a later legend, the Moerae appeared to his mother on the seventh day after his birth, and announced to her that her son would have to die when a log of wood on the hearth was consumed by the flame; whereupon Althaea immediately snatched the log from the fire and concealed it in a chest. At the Calydonian Hunt Meleager fell in love with Atalante (q.v.), and gave her (who had inflicted the first wound) the prize, the skin of the animal which he had killed. He slew the brothers of his mother, the sons of Thestius, when they were lying in wait for the virgin to rob her of the boar's hide. Overcome by pain at the death of her brothers, Althaea sets fire to the log, and Meleager dies a sudden death. His mother and wife hang themselves; his sisters weep so bitterly for Meleager, that Artemis for pity changes them into gninea-hens, (Gr. meleagrides). Legends relate that even in the nether world Meleager retained his dauntless courage; for when Heracles descended to Hades, all the shades fled before him except Meleager and Medusa.
MELEAGER	100.00%
Greek epigrammatist. Of Gadara in Palestine, flourished about B.C. 60. His collection of epigrams, by himself and others, entitled Stephanos (wreath), formed the nucleus of the Greek anthology (q.v.), Of his own poems there remain 128, in which amatory themes are cleverly and wittily treated.
CLEOPATRA	100.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Daughter of Idas, and wife of Meleager. (See MELEAGER.)
CALYDONIAN	64.68%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Hunt. See MELEAGER (1) and CENEUS.
ALTHAEA	40.12%
Daughter of Thestius, wife of (Eneus, king of Calydon, mother of Tydeus, Meleager (q.v.), and Deianeira.
OENEUS	30.30%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 King of Calydon, in Aetolia, the hills of which he was the first to plant with the vine received from Dionysus. He was son of Portheus or Porthaon, and brother of Agrius and Melas; by Althaea, daughter of Thestius, he became the father of Tydeus, Meleager, and Deianira. (See HERACLES.) As he once forgot Artemis in a sacrifice, she sent the Calydonian boar, which ravaged the country, and, even after its slaughter in the famous Calydonian Hunt, occasioned the death of Meleager (q.v.). From the plots of his brother Melas he had been delivered by Tydeus through the murder of Melas and his sons, but after the deaths of Tydeus and Meleager, his other brother Agrius, and the sons of that brother, deprived him of his throne and cast him into prison. His grandson Diomedes however revenged him with the aid of Alcmaeon, to whom he had once given hospitable entertainment, and who was desirous of taking OEneus with him to Argos, after he had given over the throne of Calydon to his son-in-law Andraemon, whose son Thoas, in Homer [Il. ii 638], leads the Aetolians to Troy. But the two sons of Agrius, who have escaped death, lie in wait for him in Arcadia, and there slay the old man. Diomedes carries his body to Argos, and deposits it in the city which after him was called OEnoe. While in Homer OEneus is dead before the expedition to Troy, later mythology represents him as surviving the Trojan War, and as restored to his kingdom by Diomedes on the latter's flight from Argos.
ATALANTE	18.95%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Greek heroine of the type of Artemis. There were two slightly different versions of her story, one current in Arcadia and the other in Boeotia. (1) The Arcadian version. Atalante, daughter of Zeus and Clymene, was exposed by her father, who had desired male offspring only. She was suckled by a bear, until she was found and brought up by a party of hunters. Under their care she grew up to be a huntress, keen, swift and beautiful. She took part in the Calydonian boar-hunt, was the first who struck the boar, and received from Meleager the head and skin of the beast as the prize of victory. (See MELEAGER.) She is also associated with the voyage of the Argonauts. She turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of her numerous suitors; but at last she propitiated the wrath of Aphrodite by returning the faithful love of the beautiful Millanion, who had followed her persistently, and suffered and struggled for her. Their son was Parthenopaeeus, one of the Seven against Thebes. (See SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.) (2) The Boetian version. Atalante was the daughter of Schoeneus, son of Athamas, and distinguished for beauty and swiftness of foot. An oracle warns her against marriage, and she accordingly lives a lonely life in the forest. She meets the addresses of her suitors by challenging them to race with her, overtaking them in the race and spearing them in the back. She is at length beaten by Hippomenes, who during the race drops on the ground three golden apples given him by Aphrodite. Atalante stoops down to pick up the apples, and thus loses the race. Hippomenes forgets to render thanks to Aphrodite, and the goddess in anger causes the pair to wander into a sanctuary of Cybele, where they are changed into lions.
ANTHOLOGY	7.62%
(-garland of flowers). The Greek word anthologia means a collection of short, especially epigrammatic poems, by various authors; we still possess one such collection dating from antiquity. Collections of inscriptions in verse had more than once been set on foot in early times for antiquarian purposes. The first regular anthology, entitled Stephanos (- wreath), was attempted by Meleager of Gadara in the 1st century B.C.; it contained, beside his own compositions, poems arranged according to their initial letters, by forty-six contemporary and older authors, including Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon, Simonides, etc., together with a prologue still extant. This collection was enriched, about 100 A.D., by Philippus of Thessalonica, with select epigrams by about thirteen later authors. Other collections were undertaken soon after by Diogenianus of Heracleia and Straton of Sardis, and in the 6th century by Agathias of Myrina, in whose Kyklos the poems are for the first time arranged according to subjects. Out of these collections, now all lost, Constantinus Cephalas of Constantinople, in the 10th century, put together a new and comprehensive anthology, classified according to contents in fifteen sections. From this collection the monk Maximus Planudes, in the 14th century, made an extract of seven books, which was the only one known till the year 1606. In that year the French scholar Saumaise (Salmasius) discovered in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg a complete manuscript of the anthology of Constantinus Cephalas with sundry additions. This MS., with all the other treasures of the library, was carried off to Rome in 1623, whence it was taken to Paris in 1793, and back to Heidelberg in 1816. The epigrams of the Greek anthology, dating as they do from widely distant ages down to the Byzantine, and being the production of more than three hundred different authors, are of very various merit; but many of them are among the pearls of Greek poetry, and could hardly have survived unless enshrined in such a collection. Taken together with the rich store of epigrams found in inscriptions, the Anthology opens to us a view of the development of this branch of Greek literature such as we can scarcely obtain in the case of any other, besides affording valuable information on Hellenic language, history, and manners, at the most different periods. Roman literature has no really ancient collection of so comprehensive a character, the so-called Latin Anthology having been gathered by modern scholars out of the material found scattered in various MSS. Among these, it is true, Saumaise's MS. of the 7th century, now in Paris, has a collection of about 380 poems, but these, with a few exceptions, are of very late authorship.
MOSAICS	2.77%