Hippomenes

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Hippomenes

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Hippomenes (?pp?µ????), also known as Melanion, was the husband of Atalanta

Atalanta

Atalanta is a character from ancient Greek mythology.After being told by an oracle she would be ruined if she were to marry, Atalanta set up a contest to win her hand in marriage....
.

Overview
When a man, struck by her beauty, watched her run through the forest, Atalanta became angry and told the men "I will race anyone who wants to marry me! Whoever is so swift that he can outrun me will receive the prize of my hand in marriage! But whomever I beat - will die."

Atalanta raced all her suitors and outran all but Hippomenes, who defeated her by cunning, not speed.

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Atalanta

Atalanta is a character from ancient Greek mythology.After being told by an oracle she would be ruined if she were to marry, Atalanta set up a contest to win her hand in marriage....
.

Overview

When a man, struck by her beauty, watched her run through the forest, Atalanta became angry and told the men "I will race anyone who wants to marry me! Whoever is so swift that he can outrun me will receive the prize of my hand in marriage! But whomever I beat - will die."

Atalanta raced all her suitors and outran all but Hippomenes, who defeated her by cunning, not speed. Hippomenes knew that he could not win a fair race with Atalanta, so he prayed to Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
for help. She wanted to punish Atalanta for refusing to love. Aphrodite gave him three golden apples and told him to drop them one at a time to distract Atalanta. After each of the first two apples, Atalanta was able to recover the lead, but when she stopped for the third, Hippomenes won the race. It took all three apples and all of his speed, but Hippomenes was finally successful, winning the race and Atalanta's hand.

Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lion

Lion

The lion is a member of the family Felidae and one of four big cats in the genus Panthera. With exceptionally large males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger....
s by Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
or Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was the Phrygian deification of the Earth Mother. As with Greek Gaia , or her Minoan civilization equivalent Rhea , Cybele embodies the fertile Earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals ....
as punishment after having sex in one of his/her temples because the Greeks believed that lions could not mate with other lions. Another account says that Aphrodite turned them into lions for forgetting to do her tribute. Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
suggests a combination of the two variants: while visiting Cybele's temple, Aphrodite caused them to have sex after going mad with lust; Cybele then transformed them into lions. Thereafter they drew Cybele's chariot. According to some accounts, Hippomenes was the father of Parthenopaeus.