Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT THIS STORY?

DID THE HEROIC AGE, the Age of Heroes, really exist?

Yes and no.

No—there was not a time when gods like Pan and Artemis actually took part in human affairs, nor was there ever a mantiger—a winged lion—preying upon the kingdom of Arcadia.

But, yes—there was once a rich and powerful civilization in ancient Greece, which we call Mycenaean, where each city was a separate state with its own king, but the people were united by a single language.

Arcadia was a district of ancient Greece, chiefly inhabited by shepherds and hunters. According to the poet Virgil, it was the home of pastoral simplicity and happiness, but actually it was a poor relative of the rest of the mainland, a mostly mountainous and infertile land, though grain was grown in some of the valleys. Surrounded on all sides by mountains, it has been called the Switzerland of Greece. Because of those mountains, when the rest of Greece was invaded in the Iron Age by the Dorians, Arcadia was left alone and the ancient speech of the Greeks survived there.

What also survived were anecdotes such as the one about Charmus, the runner, coming in seventh out of six runners, and a great deal of poetry. And—of course—stories. One of the most famous Arcadian stories is of the female hero Atalanta. She was known as a fantastic runner, and the story of her part in the Calydonian boar hunt was a standard in the Greek bardic recitations.

Did she ever meet Orion, the great hunter of myth, who was loved by Artemis and by the nymphs? Not that we know. But surely if these two hunters ever met, it could have been as prickly comrades. As for Orion’s death, there are many stories—some that he died when Artemis shot him by mistake, some that a scorpion proved his death.

We have made up the mantiger, a combination of the dreaded manticore (a mythic beast that hankers after human flesh, born in the Indies with the body of a lion, the face of a man, a tail like a scorpion’s) and the revolting Chimera (part goat, part serpent, part lion, with wings).

But we have not made up Astarte, who was one of the great Semitic goddesses and whose name appears in the Bible as Ashtoreth. She was the nature goddess of fertility and childbirth, as well as patroness of the hunt—so surely she and Artemis would have been rivals.

And what of Pan, the goat-footed god of flocks and shepherds and wild creatures? Arcadia was always the principal seat of his worship. He is described as wandering among the mountains and valleys there, either amusing himself with the chase or leading the dance of the nymphs. He loved music, invented the syrinx, or shepherd’s pipes, and was dreaded by travelers whom he startled with sudden awe or terror, hence the word panic.

A woman like Atalanta—even a mythic hero—must have had a childhood and adolescence that foretold her future deeds. This is what we know from the old stories about her: She was the daughter of King Iasus (or Iasius) and Queen Clymene of Arcadia. Expecting a boy, her father was distraught when a girl was born, and so he had her exposed on Mount Parthenon where she was found and suckled by a she-bear. Some passing hunters discovered her and brought her home, training her up as one of their own. Her birth and youth have always been as a footnote to the later stories.

Those later stories are all about her heroic adulthood. Hearing about a monstrous boar sent by Artemis to devour humans in Calydon when the king there neglected to perform his yearly sacrifices to the goddess, Atalanta took part in the hunt for the boar, despite some grumblings from the other hunters, all of whom were men. Only Meleager, the king’s son, welcomed her. When Atalanta dealt the boar its mortal wound, Meleager gave her the spoils of the hunt. His uncles taunted her, and in a passion Meleager killed them and was, in turn, killed by his own mother. Atalanta then went back to her father’s kingdom where she was finally accepted by him, for he had no other heir, and there she was expected to marry. She refused to do this unless she married a man who could beat her in a footrace. No one could until her handsome cousin Melanion (or Milanion or Hippomenes), having gotten Aphrodite’s protection, won the race with a trick, using golden apples given to him by the goddess to tempt Atalanta off the track. They married and had a son who was a hero and was eventually killed in battle by one of Orion’s grandchildren…but that’s another story altogether.

We have taken the Atalanta of the legends and tales and projected her backward, using what archaeologists and historians have told us about the civilization she would have inhabited if she had been a real young woman.

Or a young hero.