Chapter Medulla Theologica to Melibe of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Meleager, son of Althæa, who was doomed to live while a certain log remained unconsumed. Althæa kept the log for several years, but being one day angry with her son, she cast it on the fire, where it was consumed. Her son died at the same moment.—Ovid: Metam., viii. 4.

Sir John Davies uses this to illustrate the immortality of the soul. He says that the life of the soul does not depend on the body as Meleager’s life depended on the fatal brand.

Again, if by the body’s prop she stand—
If on the body’s life her life depend,
As Meleager’s on the fatal brand;
The body’s good she only would intend.
   —Reason, iii. (1622).

Melesigenes . Homer is so called from the river Melês , in Asia Minor, on the banks of which some say he was born.

…various- measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigênês, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phæbus challenged for his own.
   —Milton: Paradise Regained (1671).

Meli (Giovanni), a Sicilian, born at Palermo; immortalized by his eclogues and idylls. Meli is called “The Sicilian Theocritus” (1740–1815).

Much it pleased him to peruse
The songs of the Sicilian Muse—
Bucolic songs by Meli sung.
   —Longfellow: The Wayside Inn (prelude, 1863).

Meliades , an anagram of Miles a De[0], “God’s Soldier.” So prince Henry (son of James I.) called himself; and, at his death, W. Drummond wrote an elegy, called Tears on the Death of Meliades (1613).

(Froissart compiled the verses written by the duke of Brabant, and added some of his own. He called the collection Meliador, or The Knight of the Golden Sun, about 1390.)

Meliadus, father of sir Tristan; prince of Lyonnesse, and one of the heroes of Arthurian romance.—Tristan de Leonois (1489).

Tristan, in the History of Prince Arthur, compiled by sir T. Malory (1470), is called “Tristram;” but the old minnesingers of Germany (twelfth century) called the name “Tristan.”

Melibe , a rich young man married to Prudens. One day, when Melibê was in the fields, some enemies broke into his house, beat his wife, and wounded his daughter Sophie in her feet, hands, ears, nose, and mouth. Melibê was furious and vowed vengeance, but Prudens persuaded him “to forgive his enemies, and to do good to them who despitefully used him.” So he called together his enemies, and forgave them, to the end that “God of His endeles mercie wole at the tyme of our deyinge forgive us oure giltes that we have trespased to Him in this wreeched world.”—Chaucer: Canterbury Tales (1388).

(This prose tale is a literal translation of a French story, called Livre de Melibée et de dame Prudence, which is a free translation of the Latin story of Albertano de Brescia.—See MS. Reg., xix. 7; and MS. Reg., xix. II, British Museum.)