TFBT:Topics for Research, Part IIa

Recently, in reviewing my blogposts I noticed many posts on similar topics.  I hope my research is building on itself rather than circling endlessly around the same two posts.  So I wrote my friend Maya for help.  I believe she is brilliant and having read everything I have written she might have some insights on my work.  Maya suggested: Meleager, The Lack of Herclidae in the Trojan War and Otus & Ephialtes.  

So, here is Part IIa; Meleager, The Non-PanHellenic Hero.  I am suggesting here that we cannot judge Meleager’s myth by Modern standards, Homeric standards even by the standards of the Theban Cycle but rather in terms of the local epic cycle.

So much of the study on Meleager is contrasting Meleager/Cleopatra and Achilles/Patroclus.  There are two versions of his story.  One is told by Phoenix trying to compare Achilles to Meleager, hence the above research.  In that version he his killed by his relatives the mysterious Curetes. The other is a version where his soul is tied with a magical piece of firewood, which is burned by his mother during the battle above.  She is a Curetes.  We could try to combine to two myths. But why?  In both he is killed by one of the Curetes and in both the cause of this trouble is, to Quote Ajax, “All this for one girl, just one girl.”  Atalanta specifically, the Argonaut Meleager and Atalanta participated in the Calydonian Boar Hunt with his mother’s relatives the Curetes.  (Books have been written about who the Curetes are.) after several fatalities, the boar is slain and prizes passed out.  Thanks to Meleager’s gallantry Atalanta receives an inappropriate prize and war breaks out.  

“Then the goddess set the Kouretes and the Aetolians fighting furiously about the head and skin of the boar.[550] So long as Meleagros, dear [philos] to Arēs, was fighting in the war, 551 things went badly for the Kouretes [of the city of Pleuron], and they could not 552 put up a resistance against the Aetolians] outside the city walls [of Pleuron, the city of the Kouretes], even though they [= the Kouretes] had a multitude of fighters. 553 But as soon as anger [kholos] entered Meleagros—the kind of anger that affects also others, 554 making their thinking [noos] swell to the point of bursting inside their chest even if at other times they have sound thoughts [phroneîn], [555] [then things changed:] he [= Meleagros] was angry [khōomenos] in his heart at his dear mother Althaea,” book nine  

Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 174 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"The wrath of Diana [Artemis] sent a boar of huge size to lay waste the district of Calydon, because Oeneus had not made yearly offerings to her. Meleager, with the help of chosen youths of Greece, killed it, and gave the hide to the virgin Atalanta because of her valor. Ideus, Plexippus, Lynceus . . . brothers of Althaea, wished to take if from her. When she asked the help of Meleager, he intervened, and putting love before family relationship, killed his uncles. When Althaea, the mother, heard that her son had dared to commit such a crime, remembering the warning of the Parcae, she brought out the brand from the chest and threw it on the fire. Thus, in desiring to avenge the death of her brothers, she killed her son."

Without getting into the whole issue of who the Curetes are, I would suggest that are a type of people (Lutherans. Moose Club members, Kosmonauts) rather than a race of people.  

There is a flaw in Phoenix argument comparing Achilles to Meleager,  What occurs  to me is that while Achilles grieves for loss of his kLEos at the hands of Agamemnon, Meleager is suffering from a broken heart at his mother’s betrayal. Just as the return of the untouched Briseis cannot ease Achilles pain, no kind words from his cruel mother can now unbreak his heart. These are two different stories

S.C.R. Swain suggests that Meleager’s story is part of the earliest and pre-Homeric cycle in Greek myth; the Aetolian-Elean-Plyian Cycle. (followed by the Iolcus Cycle, Theban and Trojan). The Trojan Cycle at least the Homeric portion was all about unfailing glory, the Theban revenge, why would we assume we know the motivations of the characters of the Aetolian-Elean-Plyian Cycle matched them.  So if we discount our preconceived ideas about epic and the forced parallels with Achilles from Phoenix and Homer we end up with a character more in tune with the family-focused tragedies of the Athenian playwrights.  Maybe we should study Meleager from those paradigms.

Part I; Suitors of Helen versus Suitors of Penelope.  

Part IIA: Meleager

Part IIB; Polydora, Marpessa, and Cleopatra,

Part III; Absence of the Heraclidae at Troy

Part IV; Otus &Ephialtes

Part V: Insights