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Updated: June 13, 2025
Are not our muscles straining with those of these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves all tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all their life concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme effort? No! We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw! The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
He looked upon the youths who were girded for the race, and he heard the folk say amongst themselves, "Poor youths, as mighty and as high-spirited as they look, by sunset the life will be out of each of them, for Atalanta will run past them as she ran past the others."
The innocent cause of so much sorrow was a maiden whose face you might truly say was boyish for a girl, yet too girlish for a boy. Her fortune had been told, and it was to this effect: "Atalanta, do not marry; marriage will be your ruin." Terrified by this oracle, she fled the society of men, and devoted herself to the sports of the chase. In spite of this hard condition some would try.
In a minute she was as close behind him as ever. And yet, she really did pity him. Just then Meilanion threw the second apple over his shoulder. It was handsomer and larger than the first, and Atalanta could not bear the thought of allowing some one else to get it. So she stopped to pick it up from among the long grass, where it had fallen.
His drama Atalanta in Calydon , even though a poet is strictly not answerable for what the persons in his drama say, yet with its denunciation of the supreme evil, God, heralded the coming of a new champion who would defy the fortresses of authority.
Swiftly she moved with her head held high, and there was not one amongst the heroes who did not say, "Oh, happy would that man be whom Atalanta the unwedded would take for her husband!" All the heroes said it, but the one who said it most feelingly was the prince of Calydon, young Meleagrus. He more than the other heroes felt the wonder of Atalanta's beauty.
When clothed in a light dress of gauze or taffety she was compared to the Venus dei Medici, and the Atalanta of the Marly Gardens. Poets sang her charms; painters attempted to copy her features. One artist's fancy led him to place the portrait of Marie Antoinette in the heart of a full-blown rose. His ingenious idea was rewarded by Louis XV.
Then she told him the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were changed into lions for their ingratitude to her. Having given him this warning, she mounted her chariot drawn by swans, and drove away through the air. But Adonis was too noble to heed such counsels. The dogs had roused a wild boar from his lair, and the youth threw his spear and wounded the animal with a sidelong stroke.
When he showed himself beside Atalanta, all around the course were silent, for they all admired Hippomenes for his beauty and for the spirit that was in his face; they were silent out of compassion, for they knew the doom that befell the youths who raced with Atalanta.
They are a miscellaneous lot, from fifty to one hundred and fifty pages; little monographs on one subject, tales, and especially such narratives as are drawn up and printed after a great calamity like the loss of the Atalanta. It is a curious fact that country people are much attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets.
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