Читать книгу Artemis - Jean Shinoda Bolen - Страница 31

As a boy and a young man, Meleager is well-suited to his position, his culture, and his time. He is a physically active boy whose all-consuming interest lies in hunting. His proud father has miniature bow and arrows and spear made for him with which he practices hour after hour, honing his skills. As a prince, he joins his father's men on hunts and, at an early age, becomes an expert hunter. This obsessive fascination with mastery seems to arise in some boys who have an innate aptitude for a sport (or today, it could be a videogame) and an ability not to be distracted. Some sports—golf, tennis, skiing, surfing, mountain biking, high diving—require both intensity on the part of the boy and access to facilities. Some sports entail risking physical harm with each increment in difficulty or complexity—skateboarding stunts, for instance. Taking risks requires courage (or foolhardiness), something young men who identify with the hero and who have no sense of their own mortality have in abundance. Boys and young men who have been singled out as special may be further motivated by their fathers' or father figures' approval.

In ancient Greece—as in some parts of the non-industrial, patriarchal developing world, and in competitive sports—approval and fame came from physical achievement. By the time he is a young man, Meleager is known as the best hunter in ancient Greece. His trophies are the pelts of animals, enough to cover the floors of the huge castle. His natural abilities, his bravery, and his skill as a hunter are admired. He answers Jason's invitation to sail as an Argonaut on the quest for the Golden Fleece, a quest that attracted the heroes, demigods, and nobles of all Greece. The lure was glory and adventure. The Argo was the largest and most elaborate ship that had yet been designed. The goddess Athena fitted a beam into the prow made from the speaking oaks of the grove at Dodona where Zeus had his oracle. Though the lists differ as to who the fifty heroes were who went on this mythological expedition, which took place a generation before the Trojan War, some of the names included are familiar as the fathers of the heroes in the Iliad.