MELEAGER’S uncles had pooh-poohed a woman in a man’s sport, but it was Atalanta whose arrow wounded the wild boar of Calydon, and after Meleager had killed it, he presented her with the head and hide.

This was too much for his uncles, who demanded that if Meleager resigned it, the hide should pass to them as his nearest male relatives.

Hot with indignation, Maleager drew his sword; but Althaea, watching as her brothers were cut down by her own son, was mad with grief.

She raced over to the chest she had so long kept safe, and threw the blackened wood-chip onto the fire. Before her eyes, Meleager’s life withered away with it in the flames.

Racked by remorse, Althaea took her own life, and Artemis was bitterly revenged on the king who had slighted her.

As for the boar’s hide, that was (so they said) preserved in the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, near Athens, for many centuries.