Althea

Althea is the Latinized form of the ancient Greek female name Althaía (Αλθαια) from the element “althos” meaning “healing”. Althea is borne from Greek mythology, mainly remembered as the mother of Meleager. Althea and her son Meleager’s fates are forever intertwined in Greek mythological tradition because they are the cause of each other’s demise. When Meleager was born, the three Fates appeared before his mother Althea with their predictions: one said he would be noble, the next said he would be brave, but the final Fate (Atropos) had a grimmer view on things. She foretold that Meleager would “live only as long as this brand [in Althea’s fire pit] remains unconsumed.” Fearful for her son’s life, Althea quickly withdrew the brand from the fire, extinguished it, and sealed it safely away. In the ensuing years Meleager grew-up to be a noble and brave prince of Calydon. One season when Meleager was a young man, his father, the King of Calydon, accidentally neglected to mention the goddess Artemis in his fruit offerings to the gods. Incensed by his faux pas, Artemis let loose a giant wild boar on the land to destroy all the crops. Meleager, along with his mother’s brother and one of his own brothers, as well as Atlanta (the skilled huntress) were sent to capture the wild boar. Atlanta successfully wounded the animal with her arrow, and Meleager’s subsequent arrow finished the job. As a prize for drawing the first blood (and because he had fallen in love with her), Meleager gave Atlanta the boar’s skin. Offended that a woman should receive the animal skin, Meleager’s uncle and brother took the prize for themselves. So Meleager killed them. When Althea heard of this, in a fit of passionate rage she fetched the brand from its secret hiding place and immediately threw it into the fire (thus putting an end to her son’s life). When she had realized what she had done, the grief-stricken Althea killed herself with a dagger. In terms of the English speaking world, the female name Althea was used in a romantic poem written by Richard Lovelace (To Althea, from Prison”, 1642). In the short four-stanza poem, the speaker refers to the “divine Althea” whose love supplies all the freedom the imprisoned narrator needs: “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage”. It is believed that Lovelace chose the name Althea carefully – as the Greek word for “healer”, Althea essentially heals him from his confinement – her love provides all the freedom he needs.