Hippodamia

Hippodamia

Hippodamia (also Hippodamea and Hippodameia from Ancient Greek: Ἱπποδάμεια) was a daughter of King Oenomaus and wife of Pelops with whom her offspring were Thyestes, Atreus, and Pittheus, Alcathous.

Courtship

Having grown to manhood, Pelops wanted to marry Hippodamia. King Oenomaus, her father, fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law, had killed thirteen suitors of Hippodamia after defeating them in a chariot race and affixed their heads to the wooden columns of his palace. Pausanias was shown what was purported to be the last standing column in the late second century CE. Pelops came to ask for her hand and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, Pelops went to the seaside and invoked Poseidon, his former lover.^[1] Reminding Poseidon of their love ("Aphrodite's sweet gifts"), he asked Poseidon for help. Smiling, Poseidon caused a chariot drawn by winged horses to appear.^[2] In an episode that was added to the simple heroic chariot race, Pelops, still unsure of himself (or alternatively, Hippodamia herself), convinced Oenomaus' charioteer, Myrtilus, a son of Hermes, to help him win. Myrtilus was convinced by Pelops or Hippodamia promising him half of Oenomaus' kingdom and the first night in bed with Hippodamia. The night before the race, while Myrtilus was putting Oenomaus' chariot together, he replaced the bronze linchpins attaching the wheels to the chariot axle with fake ones made of beeswax. The race began, and went on for a long time. But just as Oenomaus was catching up to Pelops and readying to kill him, the wheels flew off and the chariot broke apart. Myrtilus survived, but Oenomaus was dragged to death by his horses. Pelops then killed Myrtilus (by throwing him off a cliff into the sea) after the latter attempted to rape Hippodamia.

As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops. This was the source of the curse that haunted future generation of Hippodamia's and Pelops' children, including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus and Orestes.

Abduction

During the wedding of Hippodameia and Pelops, the barbaric centaurs who had been invited became wildly intoxicated, attacking the other guests and even the hosts. The centaurs were eventually tamed, and order restored.^[3] The Abduction of Hippodameia was also the subject of a sculpture by French artist Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.

Walter Burkert notes^[4] that though the story of Hippodamia's abduction figures in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and on the chest of Cypselus (ca. 570 BCE) that was conserved at Olympia, and though preparations for the chariot-race figured in the east pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia, the myth of the chariot race only became important at Olympia with the introduction of chariot racing in the twenty-fifth Olympiad (680 BCE). G. Devereux connected the abduction of Hippodamia with animal husbandry taboos of Elis,^[5] and the influence of Elis at Olympia that grew in the seventh century.

References

1. ^ Pindar, First Olympian Ode. 71.
2. ^ Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 2.27.67 (noted in Kerenyi 1959:64).
3. ^ "The Abduction of Hippodameia". Duke. January-February 2004. http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/010204/depgal.html. 
4. ^ Burkert, Homo Necans 1983, p 95f.
5. ^ G. Devereux, "The abduction of Hippodameia as 'aiton' of a Greek animal husbandry rite" ''SMSR 36 (1965), pp 3-25. Burkert, in following Devereux's thesis, attests Herodotus iv.30, Plutarch's Greek Questions 303b and Pausanias 5.5.2.

See also

• Pelops
• The Abduction of Hippodameia