victory brought evil upon him. When his father OEneus, at
the end of a fruitful year, offered sacrifices to the gods, he omitted
to honour the goddess Diana by sacrificing to her, and to punish his
neglect, she had sent this destroying army. When Meleager was victor,
her wrath against his father grew yet more hot, and she sent a wild
boar, large as the bulls of Epirus, and fierce and savage to kill and
to devour, that it might ravage and lay waste the land of Calydon. The
fields of corn were trampled under foot, the vineyards laid waste, and
the olive groves wrecked as by a winter hurricane. Flocks and herds
were slaughtered by it, or driven hither and thither in wild panic,
working havoc as they fled. Many went out to slay it, but went only to
find a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he would rid the
land of this monster, and called on all his friends, the heroes of
Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus and his friend Pirithous came;
Jason; Peleus, afterwards father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of
Ajax; Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus and
Plexippus, the brothers of Althaea, the fair queen-mother. But there
came none more fearless nor more ready to fight the monster boar of
Calydon than Atalanta, the daughter of the king of Arcadia. When
Atalanta was born, her father heard of her birth with anger. He
desired no daughter, but only sturdy sons who might fight for him, and
in the furious rage of bitter disappointment he had the baby princess
left on the Parthenian Hill that she might perish there. A she-bear
heard the baby's piteous cries, and carried it off to its lair, where
she suckled it along with her young, and there the little Atalanta
tumbled about and played with her furry companions and grew strong and
vigorous as any other wild young creature of the forest.

Some hunters came one day to raid the den and kill the foster-mother,
and found, amazed, a fearless, white-skinned thing with rosy cheeks
and brave eyes, who fought for her life and bit them as did her fierce
foster-brothers, and then cried human tears of rage and sorrow when
she saw the bear who had been her mother lying bloody and dead. Under
the care of the hunters Atalanta grew into a maiden, with all the
beauty of a maid and all the strength and the courage of a man. She
ran as swiftly as Zephyrus runs when he rushes up from the west and
drives the white clouds before him like a flock of timid fawns that a
hound is