Man, it was rough being a girl in Ancient Greece.
Your life basically had two possible trajectories:
Marry someone and hope that doesn't go too wrong...
Or get knocked up by Zeus and be hunted by Hera for the rest of your natural life.
Fun times for everybody.
But in the great testosterone-laden courts of the Ancient Greek heroes,
one stands out from the rest as a unique example of a defied cliché.
An ancient example of a gloriously modern trope:
"The Token Girl".
Atalanta.
Her name is Atalanta.
And, yes, to my knowledge she is the ONLY classical Greek hero who manages to kick ass
and have two x-chromosomes at the same time.
Now Atalanta's life gets off to a rough start
when she's born in Arcadia to a king and queen who REALLY wanted a son.
Rather than do that thing where they raise her as a boy or something,
the king takes the high road and abandons her on a mountaintop to starve.
Stay classy, Arcadian King.
So baby Atalanta would be dead 15 times over if it weren't for the timely arrival
of a mother bear (which, by the way, is a symbol of Artemis,
goddess of badass women and virginity)
who takes the baby girl and raises her as one of her own cubs.
So Atalanta is raised by bears, which is like twice as rad as being raised by gorillas.
But all good things must come to an end,
and Atalanta is discovered by a troop of hunters,
who take her back to civilization and raise her as THEIR own.
So the hunters teach Atalanta about all the good things civilization has to offer,
like languages, and clothes, and sharp objects.
And Atalanta grows up to be an all-around badass and a expert huntress.
Somewhere along the lines, she beats King Peleus in a wrestling match
(also known as ACHILLES'S DAD)
and casually shoots a couple centaurs who wanted to do "unsavory" things in her general direction.
In some versions of her story, she also sails with Jason on the Argo
while he goes off to do cool Argonaut things.
But in other versions he doesn't let her on board
because of the problems of having a gorgeous lady on a long sea voyage could cause.
So while that's happening, in the nearby kingdom of Calydon, the King manages to completely forget about the goddess Artemis
when the time comes for the yearly harvest festival,
and that royally pisses her off.
So, she makes a giant murderous boar and sends it to attack Calydon,
where the boar tears through everything and generally makes a ruckus.
So the king sends for all the bravest hunters in the area.
And along with the standard Greek sausage-fest we've come to expect from such a casting call,
who should arrive but Atalanta?!
So the king's like, "Oh, uhm, hey there...miss.
My daughters are out back playing in the garden, if you want to do something a little more your speed..."
and Atalanta's like, "Uhm, I'm sorry, I must have misheard you.
I was told that there was MURDERING to be done around here, not arts and crafts!"
And the big scary dude hunters are like,
"Aw hell no! I'm not going on a boar hunt with any girls!"
But one of the LESS dick-ish hunters, the handsome Calydonian prince named Meleager, is all like
"Oh I'M sorry! It sounds like to me like you're afraid she'll out-class you!
No, no. That's fine.
I guess we'll go save the kingdom BY OURSELVES if you're all too scared."
So the hunters finally agree to go hunt the boar,
and after a lot of cartoonish misadventures involving a lot of hunters getting murdered by the boar,
Atalanta stabs him in the back and Meleager gets a solid hit into the thing's chest.
So the hunters are like
"Aw SICK Meleager, you totally killed it!"
Meleager's like
"Uh, No, c'mon guys. Atalanta here got the first strike, she should get the prize."
So he gives her the boar's skin as a prize, but Meleager's uncles,
who have been hunting with them, are the biggest dicks of all,
and they start pushing Atalanta around, trying to bully her into leaving so they can take all the credit.
Meleager tells them to stop,
the whole thing escalates into a legit sword fight,
and somehow the uncles end up dead.
Okay, this part calls for a little bit of backstory.
See, Meleager's got a weird little thing about his lifespan.
It's directly linked to a piece of firewood
when the wood burns up, he dies.
So one of the hunters runs back to the kingdom and tells Meleager's mother,
the queen, that Meleager killed her brothers.
And the queen flies into a rage and pitches the wood into the fireplace.
So Meleager spontaneously drops dead,
which, I imagine, is rather disconcerting to the rest of the hunters.
But, as much of a bummer as that is,
Atalanta has now made a name for herself as the huntress who killed the Calydonian boar.
Now, we all know what happens to gorgeous women who get famous:
dudes start flocking from around the world to marry them.
Atalanta's royally sick of these suitors all trying to win her favor,
and because the word "no" meant precisely nothing in Ancient Greece,
they're aggressively persistent, and short of actually murdering them,
there's not much Atalanta can do to make them leave her alone.
So Atalanta proposes a challenge to her eager suitors:
all they have to do is beat her in a footrace and she'll marry them,
but there's one condition!
If they lose to her, she'll straight-up murder them!
That's enough to make around half of them back off,
but the remaining suitors race her one at a time,
and all lose, and then die, and somehow this keeps attracting MORE suitors.
So one day, this young man named Hippomenes comes to town to race for Atalanta's hand in marriage.
Now, Hippomenes is nice and handsome and smart and kind of a dork,
and even Atalanta doesn't want to see him dead,
so she tries to dissuade him from racing her.
But Hippomenes is dead set on winning her hand in marriage,
and he's actually prepared for the situation!
No, not by "training,"
you think any amount of training is going to let you outrun a woman raised by bears?
No, see, he went and talked to Aphrodite,
and Aphrodite thought they'd make a super cute couple,
so she agreed to help him out.
So they start racing, and Atalanta immediately nearly catches up to him
because, among other things, Hippomenes is not a great runner.
But just as she's about to overtake him,
Hippomenes drops a golden apple on the ground.
Atalanta loves shiny things, so she stops to grab it,
and Hippomenes gets a somewhat respectable lead going,
which is immediately closed as Atalanta unsurprisingly catches up immediately.
So Hippomenes drops a second golden apple, even bigger and shinier than the first one,
and Atalanta again runs off to get it.
Again, Hippomenes gets a solid lead, and again, Atalanta catches up,
and Hippomenes throws his third and final golden apple,
and Atalanta "accidentally" takes too long to go and get it.
So Atalanta lets Hippomenes win,
and the two get married and presumably live out the rest of their days being totally adorable.
Whatever you do, I'll do it too
Show me everything and tell me how
It all means something and yet nothing to me
I can see there's so much to learn It's all so close and yet so far
I see myself as people see me Oh, I just know there's something bigger out there
I wanna know, can you show me? I wanna know about these strangers like me
Tell me more, please show me Something's familiar about these strangers like me
Tarzan - Strangers Like Me
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