Cleopatra Alcyone

For other uses, see Alcyone (mythology) and Cleopatra (Greek myth).

Cleopatrē Alcyone (Ancient Greek: Κλεοπάτρη Ἀλκυόνη, romanized: Kleopátrē Alkuónē) was the daughter of Idas and Marpessa and the wife of Meleager, a Calydonian prince and participant in the Calydonian boar hunt.^[1] Together they had a daughter, Polydora. According to Greek traveler and geographer Pausanias, Polydora was the wife of Protesilas, the first soldier to leap ashore in Troy, and therefore the first to die in the Trojan War.^[2]

Mythology

Alcyone has differing levels of responsibility and importance depending on the version of the story. When the famed Calydonian boar was finally slain, Meleager had the rights to its skin as he had delivered the final blow.^[3] However, he instead gifted it to Atalanta. This angered Meleager's uncles, Plexippus and Agenor, as they found it insulting that a woman should receive the prize instead of a man. They took the skin from Atalanta, and Meleager slew them in a rage.^[4] According to some accounts, his mother Althaea, angered by the deaths of her brothers, threw the piece of wood his life was tied to into a fire, killing him immediately.^[5]

In other accounts, Meleager’s actions led to a war between the Calydonians and the Curetes, led by the sons of Thestius.^[1] However, when Althaea curses at Meleager upon learning of the deaths of her brothers, he becomes so enraged that he refuses to fight in the war. Instead, he returned to his home with Alcyone and ignored his family and closest friends when they came to his door begging him to help protect Calydon against the siege. It was only until Alcyone finally pleaded with him to protect the city that Meleager agreed to rejoin the battle.^[5] This decision led to a Calydonian victory. However, Althaea had prayed to the gods and begged them to kill her son, and he falls in battle.^[6]

After learning of her husband's death, Alcyone either died of grief or hung herself.^[5][7] This means that three generations of women– Marpessa, Alcyone, and Polydora– all committed suicide upon the deaths of their husbands.^[2]

Notes

1. Antoninus Liberalis, 2 as cited in Nicander's Metamorphoses
2. Pausanias; Jones, William Henry Samuel; Ormerod, Henry Arderne; Wycherley, Richard Ernest (1977). "2". Description of Greece. Loeb classical library. Vol. 4. Cambridge (Mass.) London: Harvard university press W. Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-674-99104-0.
3. Apollodorus. "Library, 1.8.2". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
4. Hyginus. Fabulae. p. 244.
5. Apollodorus. "Library, 1.8.3". www.perseus.tufts.edu.
6. Homer, Iliad 9.538; Eustathius ad Homer, p. 776
7. Hyginus. Fabulae. p. 174.

References

• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. ISBN 978-0674995796. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Homer, Homeri Opera in five volumes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 1920. ISBN 978-0198145318. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.