Pelops
Pelops | |
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King of Pisa | |
Abode | Pisa |
Personal information | |
Parents | Tantalus and Dione |
Siblings | |
Consort | |
Offspring | Atreus, Thyestes, Nicippe, Pittheus, Chrysippus, and others |
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In
He was venerated at
Genealogy
Pelops was a son of Tantalus[1][2] and either Dione,[3] Euryanassa,[4][5] Eurythemista,[6] or Clytia.[6][7] In some accounts, he was called a bastard son of Tantalus while others named his parents as Atlas and the nymph Linos.[8] Others would make Pelops the son of Hermes and Calyce[9] while another says that he was an Achaean from Olenus.[10][11]
Of
Pelops and Hippodamia had numerous children. Their sons include
Four of their daughters married into the House of
By the nymph Axioche (Ἀξιόχη)[40] or Danais[41] or Astyoche,[42] Pelops was father of Chrysippus. The latter was also called the son of Hippodamia and brother of Pleisthenes who was sometimes called the son of Pelops by another woman.[33]
Relation | Names | Sources | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tyrt. | Homer | Cyp. | (Sch. on)
Pher. |
Sim. | Acus. | Pindar | Euripides | Dio. | Part. | Apd. | Plu. | Hyg. | Pau. | Steph. | Tzet. | R.G. | |||||||||||
- | Sch. | - | Sch. | - | Sch. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Parents | Tantalus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||
Hermes and Calyce | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tantalus and Clytia | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tantalus and Eurythemiste | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tantalus and Euryanassa | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tantalus and Dione | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Atlas and Linus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wife | Hippodamia | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Dia | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Axioche | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danais | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Astyoche | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sons | Atreus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Thyestes | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Argeius | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cleonymus or | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cleones | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pittheus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||
Alcathous | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Troezen | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hippalcmus or | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pelops the Younger | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dias | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
(A)Eleius | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Corinthus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cynosurus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hippasus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimoetes | ?✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copreus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sciron | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hippalcus or | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hippalcimus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sicyon | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Epidaurus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letreus | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dyspontos | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chrysippus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||
Pleisthenes | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Daughters | Eurydice | ✓ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lysidice | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Astydamia | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nicippe | ✓ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mytilene | ✓ |
Mythology
Tantalus' savage banquet
Pelops' father was
After Pelops' resurrection,
Courting Hippodamia
Having grown to manhood, Pelops wanted to marry
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.[44] 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.[45]
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.[46]
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 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[47] 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 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,[48] 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,
Cult
Origin
Pelops is believed to have Anatolian origins. He may have been originally worshipped in Phrygia or Lydia or both.[50] Other ancient mythographers connect him with Paphlagonia.[51][52] He may have come from the Paphlagonian town of Enete.[53] Thucydides says simply that Pelops was "from Asia".[54]
Others represent him as a native of Greece, who came from
Also, according to Strabo, Pelops' cult may have come to the Peloponnese originally from Phthiotis, and was first based in Laconia: "... the Achaeans of Phthiotis came down with Pelops into the Peloponnesus, took up their abode in Laconia ..."[55]
Shrines
The shrine of Pelops at Olympia, the
Giant-sized bones were and are often found in Greece, the remains of gigantic prehistoric animals. In ancient times there was obviously no knowledge of dinosaurs or mammoths, and such findings were believed to be actual remains of legendary heroes or demigods, and to reflect the supposedly supernatural stature of humans of the long-bygone Heroic Age. The bones' provenance was then determined according to local legends about ancient burials, with political expedience also playing a major role, helped along by convenient dreams, visions or priestly auguries.
Gallery
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"Throne of Pelops" at Yarıkkaya locality in Mount Sipylus
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Pelops and Hippodamia; bas-relief, Metropolitan Museum of Art
See also
- House of Atreus
- Ancient Elis
- Mount Sipylus
- Niobe
- Nyctimus
Notes
- ^ Tyrtaeus, fr. 12.7; Cypria fr. 16.4; Simonides, fr. 11.36
- Olympian Odes 1.36; Hyginus, Fabulae 124, 245 & 273
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 82 & 83
- Tzetzes on Lycophron, 52
- ^ Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4
- ^ a b Scholia ad Euripides, Orestes 11
- ^ Scholion on Pherecydes, fr. 40
- ^ Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, section 108 s.v. Tantalus
- ^ Scholion on Homer, Iliad 2.104b
- ^ Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.37a & 9.51.a (FGrHist 298 F1) with the historian Autesion as the authority
- ^ Robert Fowler, Early Greek Mythography: Commentary 14.1 (2013): "These two genealogies were probably meant to cancel Pelops' foreign origins; the first is transparently derived from the passage upon which the scholiast is commenting."
- Antiope)
- ^ cf. Scholia on Pindar, 01.9.15a; Scholia on Lycophron, Alexandra 150
- ^ Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.1.24 & 9.9
- ^ Euripides, Heracleidae 207; Euripides, Medea 683; Apollodorus, 3.15.7 & Epitome 2.10; Pausanias, 2.30.8; Plutarch, Theseus 3.1 & 7.1; Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4; Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.144c-e
- ^ Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.144
- ^ Pausanias, 2.30.8; Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4
- ^ Apollodorus, 3.12.7; Pausanias, 1.41.3; Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4; Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.144c–e
- ^ Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata 31
- ^ Homer, Iliad 2.104; Apollodorus, 2.4.6 & Epitome 2.10; Hyginus, Fabulae 84, 88, 124 & 224
- ^ Homer, Iliad 2.104; Apollodorus, 2.4.6 & Epitome 2.10; Hyginus, Fabulae 84, 86, 87, 124 & 246
- ^ Apollodorus, 2.5.1
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 14.4
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 84
- ^ a b Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4; Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.144c–e
- ^ Apollodorus, Epitome 1.2
- ^ Pausanias, 2.6.5
- ^ Pausanias, 2.26.2
- ^ Pausanias, 2.15.1; Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4
- ^ Acusilus, fr. 3; Pherecydes, fr. 20
- ^ Pausanias, 6.22.8
- ^ Tryphon, fr. 87 Velsen ap. Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Dyspontion
- ^ a b Scholia on Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.144c–e
- ^ Scholia on Homer, Odyssey 4.10; Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4; Pherecydes, fr. 132
- ^ Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4
- ^ a b Apollodorus, 2.4.5
- ^ Apollodorus, 2.4.5; Plutarch, Theseus 7.1; Pausanias, 8.14.2
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.9.1
- ^ Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Mytilēnē
- ^ Scholia on Euripides, Orestes 4; on Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.144
- ^ Pseudo-Plutarch, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories, 33
- ^ Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, section 110 s.v. The Children of Pelops
- ^ Pausanias, 6.21.9–11 with a reference to Megalai Ehoiai fr. 259(a)
- ^ Pindar, First Olympian Ode 71
- ^ Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 2.27.67 (noted in Kerenyi 1959:64).
- ISBN 978-0-7735-0837-8.
- ^ Burkert, Homo Necans 1983, p 95f.
- 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.
- ^ Euripides, Helen 386-405
- ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 14.21
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.74
- ^ Istros (FGrHist 334, F 74)
- ^ a b Pelops at theoi.com
- ^ Thucydides, 1.9.2
- ^ The Geography of Strabo, Vol 4 uchicago.edu
- ^ Pindar, First Olympian Ode
- ^ Pausanias, 5.13.1–3
- ^ 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, 5.13.4
Ancient sources
- MetamorphosesVI, 403-11
- Bibliotheca, Epitome II, 3–9; V, 10
- Pindar, Olympian Ode I
- OinomaosFr. 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 the Elder, Imagines 1.30 – Pelops
- Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 9 – Pelops
Modern sources
- Burkert, Walter (1983). "Pelops at Olympia". Homo Necans. University of California Press. pp. 93–103.
- Kerenyi, Karl (1959). The Heroes of the Greeks. New York/London: Thames and Hudson.
- Patay-Horváth, András (2017). "Pelops and the Peloponnese". Orbis Terrarum, Internationale Zeitschrift für historische Geographie der Alten Welt. 15: 113–130.
- Patay-Horváth, András (2023). Transformations of Pelops: myths, monuments and cult reconsidered. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367766986.
- Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Pelops"
External links
- The Theoi Project, "Pelops"
- Pelops at Bulfinch Mythology
- Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. .