Metamorphoses: Book 8: Meleager and the Calydonian Boar Summary & Analysis

After Theseus discovers how to escape the labyrinth, Athens no longer has to pay its tribute of young men to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur. Theseus becomes a hero in Athens, and everyone asks him for help when they run into dangers. That year in Calydon, a city near Athens, the king throws a huge festival celebrating Ceres, Minerva, and Bacchus for blessing the region. Diana is forgotten, and she flies into a rage. To get her vengeance, she sets a vicious boar loose in Calydon. The boar tramples the crops and livestock. The people hide behind the city walls.

Meleager, a young soldier, gathers a group of fighters to kill the bull. Among this group are Telamon and Peleus, Aeacus’s sons, and Atalanta, a female archer whose face is a combination of masculine and feminine features. When Meleager sees Atalanta, he immediately desires her. However, he focuses on killing the boar. The hunters assemble on a plateau, some laying traps and others unleashing hounds. The boar careens towards the hunters, flattening the trees and hounds that lie in its path.

The hunters throw their spears at the boar and miss. They call on Apollo to help their spears meet their target, but Diana removes the tips of their spears in mid-flight. The boar’s fury increases, and he flattens several hunters. One of the hunters climbs a tree to safety. Telamon trips as he tries to approach the boar. Atalanta shoots an arrow that strikes the boar beneath its ear. Meleager boasts to the others of Atalanta’s successful shot. The hunters are ashamed that Meleager is boasting about a woman. One of them tries to prove himself by killing the boar, but it impales him with its tusks.

The hunters continue to fight the boar. Theseus misses every time he tries to strike the boar. At last, one of Meleager’s spears hits the boar’s back. The boar goes wild with fury and pain. Meleager advances and drives the spear deeper, killing the boar. Meleager’s fellow hunters applaud him, but Meleager gives Atalanta the boar’s hide and tusks and shouts that he shares his glory with her. The men are jealous and ashamed. Meleager’s uncles seize the prizes from Atalanta, saying she doesn’t deserve them because she’s a woman. Meleager kills both his uncles.

Meleager’s mother Althaea is praising her son when she sees her brothers’ corpses. Hearing that Meleager killed them, she decides to avenge their death. Back when Althaea was giving birth to Meleager, the Three Fates had put a curse on the new baby by throwing a shard of wood into the fire and saying he would live as long as that piece of wood. Althaea had snatched the fragment out of the fire, soaked it in water, and hid it away. Now, Althaea gets out the fragment and orders her servants to light a fire.

Althaea takes the fragment of wood in and out of the fire, battling between motherly and sisterly affection. Her expression fluctuates between anger and compassion. She feels that she can’t let her brothers go unavenged, but also that she can’t kill her own son. At last, she decides to avenge her brothers and tosses the fragment into the flames. Out in the city, Meleager feels a burning inside his body. He calls for his family and burns to death before their eyes.

Calydon mourns Meleager’s death. Feeling guilty for killing her son, Althaea kills herself. Meleager’s sisters beat their breasts in grief and kiss their brother’s body on the funeral pyre. Diana, satisfied with her vengeance, turns his sisters into birds.