Umm Qais
Meleager was the son of Eucrates, born in the city of Gadara, now Umm Qais in Jordan, which was then a partially Hellenized community noted for its "remarkable contribution to Greek culture". He was educated in Tyre and spent his later life in Cos where he died at an advanced age, perhaps at 70. According to short autobiographical poems he wrote, Meleager was proud of his hometown and identified himself as cosmopolitan, being both "Attic" (i.e. Hellenistic) and Syrian, and also praised Tyre for having "made [him] a man" and Cos for taking "care of [him] in [his] old age".