Pelops

In Greek mythology, Pelops (Greek Πέλοψ, from "pelios": dark; and "ops": face, eye), king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus, 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: his patron claimed descent from Tantalus.

After his resurrection, Poseidon took Pelops to Olympus, and made the youth his apprentice, 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 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, he went to the seaside and invoked Poseidon, his former lover. [Pindar, "First Olympian Ode". 71.] 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. [Cicero, "Tusculanae Disputationes" 2.27.67 (noted in Kerenyi 1959:64).] 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, (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 [Burkert, "Homo Necans" 1983, p 95f.] 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, [G. Devereux, "The abduction of Hippodameia as 'aiton' of a Greek animal husbandry rite" 'SMSR" 36"' (1965), pp3-25. Burkert, in following Devereux's thesis, attests Herodotus iv.30, Plutarch's "Greek Questions" 303b and Pausanias 5.5.2.] and the influence of Elis at Olympia that grew in the seventh century.

Curse of the Pelopidai

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.

Pelops' "cultus"

The shrine of Pelops at Olympia, the "Pelopion" "drenched in glorious blood" [Pindar, "First Olympian Ode".] , described by Pausanias [Pausanias, 5.13.1-3.] 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 (Pausanias 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. [Adrienne Mayor, "The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times" (Princeton University Press, 2000) discusses the uses made of giant fossil bones in Greek cult and myth.] Pausanias was told the full story: [Pausanias 5.13.4.] 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.

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

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

* cite book | last=Burkert | first=Walter | authorlink=Walter Burkert | title=Homo Necans | publisher=University of California Press | year=1983 | chapter=Pelops at Olympia | pages=93-103
* cite book | last=Kerenyi | first=Karl | authorlink=Károly Kerényi | title=The Heroes of the Greeks | publisher=Thames and Hudson | location=New York/London | year=1959

External links

* [http://www.haidukpress.com/tantalus/index.html 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.