Meilanion (son of Amphidamas)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meilanion or Melanion ( ancient Greek Μειλανίων or Μελανίων ) is a figure in Greek mythology .

Meilanion is the son of Amphidamas from Tegea and brother of Antimache , the wife of Eurystheus . He is raised by the centaur Cheiron . Meilanion falls in love with the huntress Atalante , who only wants to marry whoever defeats her in a race. Losers, on the other hand, are doomed to die. Meilanion, himself a participant in the Calydonian boar hunt , is up to the challenge. But when he threatens to be overtaken by Atalante, who runs in full arms, he throws Aphrodite's previously received golden apples onto the racetrack. Atalante bends down, stumbles and falls, but Meilanion wins. So both marry and Atalante gives birth to the Parthenopaios . One day, while hunting , they find themselves in a sacred grove of Zeus , where they make love. For this sacrilege, Zeus transforms them into a pair of lions. With Hyginus the name of the Atalante's husband is Hippomenes , but the fate is the same. The ancient mythographers , wrongly invoking Pliny, interpreted the unusual punishment as meaning that lions only associated with leopards. As a result, the two lovers could no longer find each other in their new form.

Xenophon praised the Philoponia of Meilanion, that is, the willingness to go to the limits of what is physically and psychologically possible in competition. The couple was Properz as an example of friendship, the previous patient advertising of the Meilanion is Ovid . The theme of Meilanion and Atalante, which is always associated with Meleager in the later myth , was often taken into account in the performing arts, was depicted on the Ark of Kypselos and can also be found on the François vase , among other things .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum 8139th 8185a.
  2. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 9, 2.
  3. ↑ Hellanikos Fragment 99, 162 (= FGrHist 4 F 162).
  4. ^ Libraries of Apollodorus 3, 6, 6.
  5. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 185.
  6. ↑ Thus the first of the Mythographi Vaticani in: Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini. Edition Georg Heinrich Bode . Celle 1834, p. 14 Fabel 39 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  7. ↑ Xenophon, About the Hunt 1, 7.
  8. ↑ Properz 1, 1, 4 ff.
  9. ^ Ovid, Liebeskunst 2, 185 ff.
  10. ↑ Pausanias 5:19 , 2.

literature