Atalanta as Model: The Hunter and the Hunted - Robert Bedrosian's ...

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76 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 15/No. 1/April 1996 Vat. 1.39) changes them into lions.'5? As Marcel Detienne points out, lions are animals who the ancients believed did not have intercourse with each other, but with a leopard (Pliny, HN 8.43; Serv., In Verg. Aen. 3.113.28-32; Myth. Vat. 1.39) or not at all (Hyg., Fab. 185), and some versions of the myth claim that once Atalanta is transformed into a lion, she is never permitted to have sex again."' Consequently, lions are the animals most hated by Aphrodite.152 As argued above, versions of the boar hunt, the footrace, and perhaps the wrestling match have erotic components, which emphasize the mythical figure of Atalanta as the embodiment of the tension between male desire and fear. She is an external threat, yet an exotic object of desire. She is desired, she is conquered, yet she finally brings disaster to herself and her husband. As a devotee of Artemis, she cannot enjoy the pleasures of Aphrodite. Atalanta then ends as she began: wild and bestial, nonsexual, liminal, sentenced to hunt forever, now as a lion, in the wilds with Artemis.'53 Bard College 150. Cf. schol. at Theoc. 3.40-42b. Nonnos, Dionysiaca 12.87-89 credits Artemis with changing Atalanta to a lioness, presumably as punishment for leaving her realm (cf. Kallisto). See Detienne (supra, n. 5) 103 n. 137. 151. Detienne (supra, n. 5) 45-46. Note that Euripides, Medea 1339-43 describes Medea as a lioness and not as a woman. Was this a term reserved for strong, unfeminine women? Cf. Page duBois, "On the Invention of Hierarchy," Arethusa 15 (1982) 208. duBois (supra, n. 12) 112ff. examines Medea as the foreigner, as the outsider who invades the Greek city, but whose very femaleness is Other and makes her the enemy within. 152. Detienne (supra, n. 5) xii, 27, 44-46. Scanlon (supra, n. 51) 103 maintains that Atalanta undergoes a change in status from huntress in the Calydonian boar hunt to prey as she is changed to a lion. But because the lion is not hunted in the myth, this explanation is not very convincing. 153. Detienne (supra, n. 5) 46 describes Atalanta's "animal metamorphosis as a function of Atalanta's original hostility to a marital scheme whose emblem is Aphrodite qua goddess of desire and sexual union." This content downloaded from 71.172.230.227 on Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:02:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
BARRINGER FIGURES 1-2 :i~!j~,~, ~ . .. ......... . .i~. + t:. ?' Figure 1: Attic black-figure dinos, ca. 575-550 B.C. Rome, Vatican 306. Photograph courtesy of the Direzione Generale Musei Vaticani, Rome. Fig. 2: Attic black-figure hydria near the Princeton Painter, ca. 550 B.c. Florence, Museo Archeologico 3830. Photograph courtesy of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Firenze. This content downloaded from 71.172.230.227 on Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:02:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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