Page 176 - the-iliad

‘So long as Meleager was in the field things went badly
with the Curetes, and for all their numbers they could not
hold their ground under the city walls; but in the course of
time Meleager was angered as even a wise man will some-
times be. He was incensed with his mother Althaea, and
therefore stayed at home with his wedded wife fair Cleopa-
tra, who was daughter of Marpessa daughter of Euenus,
and of Ides the man then living. He it was who took his
bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessa’s
sake; her father and mother then named her Alcyone, be-
cause her mother had mourned with the plaintive strains
of the halcyon-bird when Phoebus Apollo had carried her
off. Meleager, then, stayed at home with Cleopatra, nurs-
ing the anger which he felt by reason of his mother’s curses.
His mother, grieving for the death of her brother, prayed
the gods, and beat the earth with her hands, calling upon
Hades and on awful Proserpine; she went down upon her
knees and her bosom was wet with tears as she prayed that
they would kill her son—and Erinys that walks in darkness
and knows no ruth heard her from Erebus.
‘Then was heard the din of battle about the gates of Ca-
lydon, and the dull thump of the battering against their
walls. Thereon the elders of the Aetolians besought Melea-
ger; they sent the chiefest of their priests, and begged him
to come out and help them, promising him a great reward.
They bade him choose fifty plough-gates, the most fertile in
the plain of Calydon, the one-half vineyard and the other
open plough-land. The old warrior Oeneus implored him,
standing at the threshold of his room and beating the doors

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