Meleager.
A warrior of great bravery, Meleager was the son of Oeneus, king of Calydon in Aetolia, and Althaea. At the time of her son’s birth, the Fates told Althaea that the boy would live until a log then burning on the hearth was consumed. She immediately extinguished the fire and hid away the log.
      As a youth Meleager joined the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece, distinguishing himself and receiving a wound in the battle at Colchis. After returning home, he married Cleopatra, daughter of Idas and Marpessa. When a savage boar was sent by Artemis (Diana) to ravage Calydon, Meleager organized a great hunt to destroy it. According to Ovid, after the huntress Atalanta was presented with the boar’s head as a trophy for drawing first blood, two of Althaea’s brothers objected; in a rage Meleager slew them. Furious and grieving over the deaths of her brothers, Althaea retrieved the half-burned log and threw it on the fire, killing her son.
      In another version of the myth, Artemis fomented a war over possession of the boar’s head and hide between the Aetolians and the Curetes, who had participated in the boar hunt. Meleager defended Aetolia valiantly until he accidentally killed two of his uncles, whereupon his mother cursed him and he withdrew from battle. After entreaties by his wife and countrymen, he rejoined the fight and repulsed the Curetes, but was killed in the fray.
      Meleager was famous in classical legend as a fearless warrior. When Heracles visited the Underworld in quest of Cerberus (his twelfth labor), all the shades fled before the hero except Meleager, who staunchly held his ground.
      
      
      Classical Sources. Homer, Iliad 9.529—99. Bacchylides, Odes 5-93ff. Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers 602—11. Sophocles, Meleager (fragments). Euripides, Meleager (fragments). Callimachus, Hymns, 3, To Artemis” lines 26off. Diodorus Siculus, Biblioteca 4.34, 4.48.4 Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.268—546. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 1.8.1-3. Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.45.6. Hyginus, Fabulae 171—74. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 15.
      
      
       See also Meleager: the Calydonian Boar Hunt