Even when he woke, life held no care for him, but he seemed to walk in
a light that was for him alone. And all this time, just as the Sun-god
watched over the sheep of King Admetus, Diana kept the flocks of
Endymion, but it was for love's sake.




THE CALYDONIAN HUNT.


In that day of the chase, there was one enterprise renowned above all
others,--the great hunt of Calydon. Thither, in search of high
adventure, went all the heroes of Greece, just as they joined the quest
of the Golden Fleece, and, in a later day, went to the rescue of Fair
Helen in the Trojan War.

For Oeneus, king of Calydon, had neglected the temples of Diana, and
she had sent a monstrous boar to lay waste all the fields and farms in
the country. The people had never seen so terrible a beast, and they
soon wished that they had never offended the goddess who keeps the
woods clear of such monsters. No mortal device availed against it, and,
after a hundred disasters, Prince Meleager, the son of Oeneus, summoned
the heroes to join him in this perilous hunt.

The prince had a strange story. Soon after his birth, Althea, the
queen, had seen in a vision the three Fates spinning the thread of life
and crooning over their work. For Clotho spins the thread, Lachesis
draws it out, and Atropos waits to cut it off with her glittering
shears. So the queen beheld them, and heard them foretell that her baby