Editing Pelops (section)

== Mythology ==

=== Tantalus' savage banquet ===
Pelops' father was [[Tantalus]], king at [[Spil Mount|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. While Tantalus was banished to [[Tartarus]], Pelops was ritually reassembled and brought back to life, his shoulder replaced with one of [[ivory]] made for him by [[Hephaestus]]. Pindar mentioned this tradition in his First Olympian Ode, only to reject it as a malicious invention. Instead, Pindar relates that he was taken by Poseidon as a lover and the story of his death was a rumour spread after his dissapearance by neighbours envious of Tantalus's prosperity.<ref>Pindar, ''Olympian'' 1, 39–52.</ref>

After Pelops's resurrection, [[Poseidon]] took him to [[Mount Olympus|Olympus]], and made him the youth [[apprentice]], teaching him also to drive the divine chariot. Later, Zeus found out about the gods' stolen food and their now revealed secrets, and threw Pelops out of Olympus, angry at his father, Tantalus.

=== Courting Hippodamia ===
Having grown to manhood, Pelops wanted to marry [[Hippodamia (daughter of Oenomaus)|Hippodamia]]. Her father, King [[Oenomaus]], fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law, had killed eighteen suitors of Hippodamia after defeating them in a [[Chariot racing|chariot race]] and affixed their heads to the wooden columns of his palace. [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] was shown what was supposedly the last standing column in the late second century CE; he wrote that Pelops erected a monument in honor of all the suitors who had preceded him:<ref>Pausanias, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.+6.21.9&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0160:boo=0:chapter=0&highlight=Pelops 6.21.9–11] with a reference to ''[[Megalai Ehoiai]]'' fr. 259(a)</ref>

{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
# Marmax
# Alcathous, son of [[Porthaon]]
# Euryalus
# Eurymachus
# Crotalus
# Acrias of [[Lacedaemon]], founder of Acriae
# Capetus
# Lycurgus
# Lasius
# [[Chalcodon]]
# Tricolonus (descendant of another Tricolonus, who was a son of [[Lycaon (king of Arcadia)|Lycaon]])
# Aristomachus
# Prias
# Pelagon
# Aeolius
# Cronius
# Erythras, son of [[Leucon]]
# [[Eioneus]], son of [[Magnes (mythology)|Magnes]]
{{div col end}}

[[File:Pelops and Hippodamia racing.jpg|thumb|left|Pelops and [[Hippodamia (daughter of Oenomaus)|Hippodamia]] racing in a bas-relief ([[Metropolitan Museum of Art]])]]
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.<ref>Pindar, ''First Olympian Ode'' 71</ref> Reminding Poseidon of their love ("[[Aphrodite]]'s sweet gifts"), he asked Poseidon for help. Smiling, Poseidon caused a chariot drawn by untamed winged horses to appear.<ref>[[Cicero]], ''Tusculanae Disputationes'' 2.27.67 (noted in Kerenyi 1959:64).</ref>

Two episodes involving charioteers were added into the plain account of the heroic chariot race. In the first related by [[Theopompus]], having received the horses, Pelops hastens to Pisa to defeat Oenomaus. On the way, his charioteer Cillus (also named Sphaerus) dies and stands in a dream over Pelops, who was highly distressed about him, to make requests for a funeral. Pelops complies by burying his ashes magnificently; he raises a mound to erect a temple dedicated to [[Apollo]], which he names Apollo Cillaeus, and also founds a city besides the mound and the temple which he also names Cilla, after his charioteer and friend. Both the temple and the city are mentioned in the first book of [[Homer]]'s ''[[Iliad]]'' and suggestions regarding their exact location have been made. Furthermore, Cillus, even after his death, appears to have helped Pelops' cause in order for him to win the race.<ref>{{cite book|title = Theopompus the Historian |isbn=978-0-7735-0837-8|author=Gordon S. Shrimpton|publisher=[[McGill-Queen's University Press]] |year= 1991}}</ref>

The second, found in several versions, has Pelops, still unsure of himself, the winged horses and chariot of divine providence he had secured. Oenomaus' charioteer, [[Myrtilus]], a son of [[Hermes]], is persuaded to help Pelops win by promising Myrtilus half of Oenomaus' kingdom and the first night in bed with Hippodamia. The night before the race, while Myrtilus was putting together Oenomaus' chariot, 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. Here lies the main differences in the versions, while all then see Pelops kill Myrtilus (by throwing him off a cliff into the sea) after the latter attempted to rape Hippodamia, some have Pelops give the promise to Myrtilus of Hippodamia's virginity and then either renege the agreement or Myrtilus being impatient and trying to take her beforehand, others have Hippodamia, noticing Pelops' insecurity, giving the promise behind the back of Pelops, who then falsely believed it was an attempted rape.

=== Olympic Games ===
After his victory, Pelops organized chariot races as thanksgiving to the gods and as funeral games in honor of King Oenomaus, in order to be purified of his death. It was from this funeral race held at Olympia that the [[Ancient Olympic Games#Origin mythology|beginnings of the ancient Olympic Games]] were inspired. Pelops became a great king, a local hero, and gave his name to the Peloponnese. Walter Burkert notes<ref>Burkert, ''Homo Necans'' 1983, p 95f.</ref> that though the story of Hippodamia's abduction figures in the Hesiodic ''[[Catalogue of Women]]'' and on the chest of [[Cypselus]] (c. 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, Olympia|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 [[Ancient Elis|Elis]],<ref>G. Devereux, "The abduction of Hippodameia as '[[cause|aiton]]<nowiki>' of a Greek animal husbandry rite" ''</nowiki>''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.</ref> 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 their half brother, [[Chrysippus (mythology)|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; each successive generation of descendants suffered greatly by atrocious crimes and compounded the curse by committing more crimes, as the curse weighed upon Pelops' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren including Atreus, Thyestes, [[Agamemnon]], [[Aegisthus]], [[Menelaus]], and finally [[Orestes (mythology)|Orestes]], who was acquitted by a court of law convened by the gods [[Athena]] and [[Apollo]]. Although commonly referred to as "the curse of the [[Atreus|Atreides]]", the circle of atrocious events began two generations before Atreus and continued for two generations after him, before being formally absolved by the [[Erinyes|Furies]] in court. Many decades after Pelops's death, his grandson Menelaus, having survived the long-lasting [[Trojan War]] and stranded in Egypt, would recount his numerous plights and wish Pelops had perished for good at Tantalus' dinner, so that Atreus, and therefore Agamemnon and Menelaus himself, would never have been born.<ref>Euripides, ''[[Helen (play)|Helen]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0100%3Acard%3D386 386-405]</ref>