Atalanta
The Swift-Footed
at-uh-LAN-tuh
Exposed at birth for being a girl, raised by a bear, and the fastest runner alive, beaten only by a trick.
The Story
Her father left her on a mountain because he wanted a son; a she-bear sent by Artemis nursed her and hunters raised her. She drew first blood on the Calydonian Boar when a field of famous men could not, and the argument over giving a woman the trophy killed several of them.
Pressed to marry, she set the terms: outrun her or die. Hippomenes prayed to Aphrodite, got three golden apples, and dropped them one at a time to break her stride. The marriage ended with both of them turned into lions for offending a god in a sanctuary, a punishment that, in the versions where lions were believed unable to mate with each other, was the point.
Did You Know?
- Whether she sailed with the Argonauts depends on the source. Apollodorus lists her; Apollonius has Jason refuse her, worried about what one woman among that crew would do to it.
- She is one of very few figures in Greek myth to beat men at their own contests repeatedly and openly, and the only way anyone finds to stop her is a trick.
- Her son Parthenopaeus is one of the Seven Against Thebes, which puts her descendants in the next great cycle of stories.