Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

MELEAGROS AND THE KOURETES. 161
her brothers, the clouds which are scattered by his spear CHAP,
rays, who moves on his way moodily and sullenly, as the >
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clouds pass across his face, and appears at intervals to the
terror of all his enemies. He is a son of Oineus or Ares,
and Althaia the nourishing Demeter ; and he proves his skill
in the use of the javelin by bringing down the monstrous
boar which the chieftains assembled at Kalydon had failed
to kill. But the interest of his life lies in the burning torch
and the prophecy of the Moirai, that with its extinction his
own life must come to an end. His mother therefore
snatches it from the fire, and carefully guards it from harm.
But the doom must be accomplished. Artemis stirs up strife
between the men of Kalydon and the Kouretes for the spoils
of the boar, and a war follows in which the former are
always conquerors whenever Meleagros is among them.
But the Kouretes are, like the Korybantes and the Idaian
Daktyloi, the mystic dancers who can change their forms at
will, and thus their defeat is the victory of the sun who
scatters the clouds as they wheel in their airy movements
round him. These clouds reappear in the brothers of
Althaia, and when they are slain her wrath is roused, like
the anger of Poseidon when Polyphemos is blinded, or the
rage of Zeus when the Kyklopes are slain. The curse now
lies heavy on Meleagros. His voice is no more heard in the
council ; his spear is seen no more in the fight. He lies idle
in his golden chambers with the beautiful Kleopatra;
Kephalos is taking his rest with Eos behind the clouds
which hide his face from mortal men, and he will not come
forth. Wearied out at last, his mother brings forth the
fatal brand and throws it into the fire, and as its last spark
nickers out, Meleagros dies. With him die his wife and his
mother; Deianeira and Oinone cannot live when Herakles
and Paris are gone. 1 So passes away the hero who can only
thus be slain, and his sisters who are changed into guinea-
hens weep for his death, as the sisters of Phaethon, the
bright fleecy clouds, shed tears of amber over their brother's
grave.
1 In the Iliad Meleagros does not heard the curse of Althaia overtake
return home from the tight with the him. This is only another form of the
Kouretes, for the Erinyes who have myth of Helene Dendritis.
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