Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #2)

by Stephen Fry

She was too honorable to go back on her word and she and Hippomenes were soon married. You can say it was the work of Aphrodite, you can say it was love—it amounts to the same thing—but Atalanta found herself growing fonder and fonder of Hippomenes until it could safely be said that she loved him with an ardor equal to his for her. They had a son, PARTHENOPAEUS, who grew up to be one of the Seven against Thebes.240 Their married life, though, was to end strangely. It seems that Hippomenes neglected to thank Aphrodite properly for her aid in winning Atalanta. As a punishment, she visited great lust upon the couple while they were visiting a temple sacred to the goddess CYBELE.241 Unable to resist the urge, they made furious love on the floor of her temple. The outraged Cybele transformed the pair into lions. This might not seem so terrible a punishment, lions being kings of the jungle and high up the food chain; but to the Greeks it was the worst fate that could befall lovers, for they believed that lions and lionesses were unable to mate with each other. Lion cubs, they thought, came exclusively from the union of lions and leopards. And so Atalanta and Hippomenes were doomed to live out their lives drawing Cybele’s chariot, closely harnessed to each other, but eternally denied the pleasure of sex.