Kalyke and her husband Aethlios had a son Endymion, the handsomest
of men, who was beloved by Selene. He, either by his own wish, granted
by Zeus, or by contrivance of Selene or for some other reason, was
cast into perpetual sleep. He had, but not by Selene, a son Aitolos,
eponym of Aitolia; among his descendants was Marpessa, the beloved of
Apollo. A great-great-grandson of Aitolos was Oineus king of Kalydon,
of whom the following famous story [called the “Kalydonian Boar Hunt”]
is told. By forgetting to sacrifice to her, he incurred the wrath of
Artemis, who therefore sent a great boar which ravaged his country
Kalydon. His son Meleagros collected a band of chosen heroes to do
battle with this creature—the tale is almost as famous as that of
the Argonauts, although it so happens that no very important work
describing it has come down to us. After much trouble and the loss of
some of their number, they succeeded in killing the boar, the honour
of ‘first spear’ going to no man, but the virgin huntress Atalante.
Meleagros loved Atalante, and insisted on giving her the spoils of the boar; his mother’s brothers, the sons of Thestios, tried to take them from her, and Meleagros, so the story usually runs, killed them. Thereupon his mother Althaia took vengeance on her son for the death of her kin. When Meleagros was born, the Moirai appeared in the birth-room, and declared that the child should live until the brand which then lay on the fire should burn to ash. Althaia snatched it off the fire and kept it preciously; but now she flung it again into the fire, and as it burned, Meleagros drooped and died. At his funeral, the women who mourned for him were turned into birds (meleagrides, guinea-fowl).
Thus far the common story; but of the tale about the magical fire-brand there is no trace in Homer. He knows of the boar-hunt, and that a quarrel somehow arose over the spoils, but it was between the Kalydonians and their neighbours the Kouretes. Meleagros after a while quarrelled with his mother Althaia, who cursed him, “being exceeding grieved over the slaying of her brother,” presumably by Meleagros in battle; he then withdrew from the war, and the Kouretes pressed the Kalydonians hard. He remained proof against entreaties and offers, until at last his wife Kleopatra (daughter of Idas and Marpessa) besought him to go forth to fight, and he consented. He had died some time before the Trojan War, but Homer does not say how.