Pelops

 

(pē'lŏps) , in Greek mythology, son of Tantalus. He was murdered by his father, who served his flesh at a banquet for the gods. The gods recognized this abominable trick, punished Tantalus and restored Pelops, giving him an ivory shoulder to replace the one Demeter had unwittingly eaten. He won his wife, Hippodamia, by defeating her father, King Oenomaus of Pisa, in a chariot race. To ensure victory Pelops not only used a winged chariot given to him by Poseidon, but he bribed Myrtilus, Oenomaus' charioteer, to betray his master. After winning the race Pelops would not pay Myrtilus his reward. Instead, he threw him into the sea. Before drowning, the charioteer cursed the house of Pelops, and misfortunes fell on the sons of Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes. The Peloponnesus peninsula was named for Pelops.

In Greek mythology, Pelops (Greek Πέλοψ, from pelios: dark; and ops: face, eye) was venerated at Olympia, where his cult developed into the founding myth of the Olympic Games, the most important expression of unity, not only for the Peloponnesus, "land of Pelops", but for all Hellenes. At the sanctuary at Olympia, chthonic night-time libations were offered each time to "dark-faced" Pelops in his sacrificial pit (bothros) before they were offered to the sky-god Zeus (Burkert 1983:96).

Genealogy

Pelops was a son of Tantalus and Dione. Of Phrygian or Lydian birth, he departed his homeland for Greece, and won the crown of Pisa (or Olympia) from King Oenomaus. Pelops was credited with numerous children, begotten on his wife Hippodameia, daughter of Oenomaus. Pelops' sons include Pittheus, Alcathous, Dias, Pleisthenes, Atreus, Thyestes, Copreus, and Hippalcimus. Pelops and Hippodameia also had several daughters, some of whom married into the House of Perseus, such as Astydameia (who married Alcaeus), Nicippe (who married Sthenelus), and Eurydice (who married Electryon). By the nymph Axioche, Pelops was father of Chrysippus.

Tantalus' savage banquet

Pelops' father was Tantalus, king at Mount Sipylus in Anatolia. Wanting to make an offering to the Olympians, Tantalus cut Pelops into pieces and made his flesh into a stew, then served it to the gods. Demeter, deep in grief after the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, absentmindedly accepted the offering and ate the left shoulder. The other gods sensed the plot, however, and held off from eating of the boy's body. Pelops was ritually reassembled and brought back to life, his shoulder replaced with one made of ivory made for him by Hephaestus. Pindar mentioned this tradition in his First Olympian Ode, only to reject it as a malicious invention.

After his resurrection, Pelops was more beautiful than before; Poseidon fell in love with him, took him to Olympus, and made the youth his lover, teaching him to drive the divine chariot. Later, Zeus threw Pelops out of Olympus, angry that his father, Tantalus, had stolen the food of the gods, given it to his subjects, and revealed the secrets of the gods.

Courting Hippodamia

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. Pelops came to ask for her hand and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, he 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] Still unsure of himself, Pelops (or alternatively, Hippodamia herself) convinced Oenomaus' charioteer, Myrtilus, a son of Hermes, (by promising him half of Oenomaus' kingdom and the first night in bed with Hippodamia), to help him win. 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 started, 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.

Walter Burkert notes^[3] 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 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,^[4] and the influence of Elis at Olympia that grew in the seventh century.

Curse of the Pelopides

As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops for his ultimate betrayal. This was one of the sources of the curse that destroyed his family (two of his sons, Atreus and Thyestes killed a third, Chrysippus, who was his favorite son and was meant to inherit the kingdom; Atreus and Thyestes were banished by him together with Hippodamia, their mother, who then hanged herself) and haunted Pelops' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus and Orestes.

Pelop's cultus

The shrine of Pelops at Olympia, the Pelopion "drenched in glorious blood"^[5], described by Pausanias^[6] stood apart from the temple of Zeus, next to Pelops' grave-site by the ford in the river. It was enclosed with a circle of stones. Pelops was propitiated at night, with the offering of a black ram. His remains were contained in a chest near the sanctuary of Artemis Kordax (Pausanmias 6.22.1), though in earlier times a gigantic shoulder blade was shown; during the Trojan War, John Tzetzes said, Pelops' shoulder-blade was brought to Troy by the Greeks because the Trojan prophet Helenus claimed the Pelopids would be able to win by doing so.^[7]. Pausanias was told the full story:^[8] the shoulder-blade of Pelops was brought to Troy from Pisa, the rival of Elis; on the return, the bone was lost in a shipwreck, but afterwards recovered by a fisherman, miraculously caught in his net.

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Pelops (son of Agamemnon)

There is another Pelops in Greek mythology. This was a son of Agamemnon and Cassandra. This Pelops, carrying the ancestral name, and his twin brother Teledamus (destined to have been "far-ruling"), the very emblems of the Pelopides, were murdered in their infancy by the usurper Aegisthus.

Notes

Spoken-word myths - audio files

Pelops myths as told by story tellers
1. Apotheosis of Pelops, (integral to myth of Tantalus), read by Timothy Carter
Bibliography of reconstruction: Homer, Odyssey, 11.567 (7th c. BCE); Pindar, Olympian Odes, 1 (476 BCE); Euripides, Orestes, 12-16 (408 BCE); Apollodorus, Epitomes 2: 1-9 (140 BCE); Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI: 213, 458 (8 CE); Hyginus, Fables, 82: Tantalus; 83: Pelops (1st c. CE); Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.22.3 (160 - 176 CE)
2. Marriage of Pelops and Hippodameia, read by Timothy Carter
Bibliography of reconstruction: Pindar, Olympian Ode, I (476 BCE); Sophocles, (1) Electra, 504 (430 - 415 BCE) & (2) Oenomaus, Fr. 433 (408 BCE); Euripides, Orestes, 1024-1062 (408 BCE); Apollodorus, Epitomes 2, 1-9 (140 BCE); Diodorus Siculus, Histories, 4.73 (1st c. BCE); Hyginus, Fables, 84: Oinomaus; Poetic Astronomy, ii (1st c. CE); Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.1.3 - 7; 5.13.1; 6.21.9; 8.14.10 - 11 (ca. 160 - 176 CE); Philostratus the Elder Imagines, I.30: Pelops (170 - 245 CE); Philostratus the Younger, Imagines, 9: Pelops (ca. 200 - 245 CE); First Vatican Mythographer, 22: Myrtilus; Atreus et Thyestes; Second Vatican Mythographer, 146: Oenomaus
3. Downfall of Pelops: the Laius and Chrysippus myth, read by Timothy Carter
Bibliography of reconstruction: Pindar, Olympian Ode, I (476 BCE); Apollodorus Library and Epitome 3.5.5 (140 BCE); Hyginus, Fables, 85. Chrysippus; 243. Women who Committed Suicide (1st c. CE); Pausanias, Description of Greece, 9.5.5-10, 6.20.7 (c. 160 - 176 CE); Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, Book XIII, 602 (c. 200 CE); Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, ii, 34, 3 - 5 (150 - 215 CE)

Ancient sources

• Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 403-11
• Apollodorus, Epitome II, 3-9; V, 10
• Pindar, Olympian Ode I
• Sophocles, Electra 504 and Oinomaos Fr. 433
• Euripides, Orestes 1024-1062
• Diodorus Siculus, Histories 4.73
• Hyginus, Fables: 84 - Oenomaus
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.1.3-7, 5.13.1, 6.21.9, 8.14.10-11
• Philostratus, Imagines 1.30 - Pelops
• Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 9 - Pelops
• First Vatican Mythographer, 22 Myrtilus, [[At", the Latinized spelling

Modern sources

• Burkert, Walter (1983). "Pelops at Olympia", Homo Necans. University of California Press, 93-103. 
• Kerenyi, Karl (1959). The Heroes of the Greeks. New York/London: Thames and Hudson. 

External links

• The sacrifice of Pelops, a fully developed story compiled from selected primary sources to highlight the shamanic and Promethean aspects of the tale. By Pindar's time this view would have been rejected.

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