Atalanta

Modern Talanto, a rocky islet west of the entrance to the Greek port city of
Piraeus. Also the name of another Greek island in the fjord of Euboea, whose
name was changed to Talandonisi.
In Greek myth, Atalanta was a virgin huntress, who vowed to marry the man
able to beat her in a foot race. There were many suitors, but she outran them all,
save Hippomenes, who cunningly dropped three golden apples, one by one, which,
in her desire for the fruit, she stopped to pick up, thereby forfeiting her victory
and virginity. Almost immediately after this contest, however, she and Hippomenes
incurred the wrath of Zeus by copulating in the god’s sacred precinct. He turned
the couple into a lioness and a lion. Their son, Pathenopaeus, grew up to become
a leader of the Argives (one of the Seven Against Thebes).
While outwardly the story of Atalanta appears to have nothing to do with
Atlantis, Rene Guenon wrote that the three golden apples dropped by Hippomenes
were from the Hesperides, the three daughters of Atlas (that is, Atlantids or
“Atlantises”). Guenon also concludes that Atalanta’s role as heroine of the
Caledonian bear hunt signified change from a solstitial to an equinoctial method
of measuring time; from reckoning the starting point of the annual cycle with the
appearance of the Pleiades (Hesperides), instead of the Great Bear, thus implying
the ascendancy of Atlantean civilization over a former culture.
The Atlantean character of Atalanta’s name and her punishment at the hands
of Zeus (who likewise condemned the Atlanteans in Plato’s version for their immorality)
parallel Atlantis in a garbled mythic tradition. Her husband, Hippomenes,
is likely Atlantean as well, because at least some names in Plato’s account are
similarly equine: Elasippos (“Knightly Horse-Rider,” one of the original 10
Atlantean kings), Leukippe (“White Mare,” the first lady of Atlantis), and so on.
Like all the other daughters of Atlas, Atalanta gave birth to a foremost culturebearer,
signifying the Atlanteans who voyaged to other lands, where they became
the progenitors of new societies.