Pelops

“ This tradition is confuted by some, who support that Tantalus did not fly into Greece, as he had been some time before confined by Jupiter in the infernal regions for his impiety, and therefore Pelops was the only one whom the enmity of Tros persecuted. Pelops came to Pisa, where he became one of the suitors of Hippodamia the daughter of king Œnomaus, and he entered the lists against the father, who promised his daughter only to him who could outrun him in a chariot race. ”

“ This is quite consistent with the statement of Thucydides that “those Peloponnesians who have received the clearest accounts by tradition from the men of former time declare that Pelops first by means of the mass of wealth with which he came from Asia to men who were poor, having acquired for himself power although he was a new-comer, gave occasion for the land to be called after him.” ”

“ Poseidon carried Pelops off to Olympus, where he dwelt with the gods, till, for his father’s sins, he was cast out from heaven. Then, taking much wealth with him, he crossed over from Asia to Greece. He went to Pisa in Elis as suitor of Hippodameia, daughter of king Oenomaus, who had already vanquished in the chariot-race and slain many suitors for his daughter’s hand. ”

“ The gods in pity restored the youth to life, and Ceres replaced the missing shoulder with one of ivory or of gold. Driven away from his kingdom, which was seized by the King of Troy, Pelops took refuge in Greece, where he ruled the extensive peninsula, the Peloponnesus, which still bears his name. ”

“ Hence the supposition of his being an immigrant, son of a wealthy Lydian named Tantalus, who was the offspring of Zeus and Ploutô. Lydian wealth and Lydian chariot-driving rendered Pelops a fit person to occupy his place in the legend, both as ruler of Pisa and progenitor of the Mykenæan Atreids. Even with the admission of these two circumstances there is considerable difficulty, for those who wish to read the legends as consecutive history, in making the Pelopids pass smoothly and plausibly from Pisa to Mykênæ. ”

“ And the wood is always of the white poplar tree. And whatever stranger or native of Elis eats the flesh of the victim sacrificed to Pelops may not enter the temple of Zeus. Those who sacrifice to Telephus at Pergamum north of the river Caicus are in a similar predicament: they may not enter the temple of Æsculapius till they have had a bath. And the following tradition is still told about Pelops. During the protracted siege of Ilium the seers are said to have prophesied that they would never capture the town till they procured the bows of Hercules and a bone of Pelops. ”

“ Œnomaus, having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in marriage except to some suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth; [371] the ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnêsus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life ”

“ The legend which connected Tantalus and Pelops with Mount Sipylus may probably have grown out of the Æolic settlements at Magnêsia and Kymê. Both the Lydian origin and the Pisatic sovereignty of Pelops are adapted to times later than the Iliad, when the Olympic games had acquired to themselves the general reverence of Greece, and had come to serve as the religious and recreative centre of the Peloponnêsus—and when the Lydian [p. 157] and Phrygian heroic names, Midas and Gygês, were the types of wealth and luxury, as well as of chariot driving, in the imagination of a Greek. ”

“ King of Pisa, in Elis, and father of Hippodamia. He was told by the oracle that he would perish by his son-in-law. Being skillful in driving a chariot, he announced that he would give his daughter in marriage only to some one who could defeat him in a race, death being the result of those who were defeated. After a number of aspirants had contended and failed, Pelops, son of Tantalus, entered the lists, and by bribing the charioteer of Œnomaus, who provided a chariot with a broken axle-tree, Pelops won the race, and married Hippodamia, becoming king of Pisa. ”

“ This proved too true. Pelopea afterwards married her uncle Atreus, who kindly received in his house his wife’s illegitimate child, called Ægysthus, because preserved by goats (αἰγες) when exposed in the mountains. Ægysthus became his uncle’s murderer. See: Ægysthus. Hyginus, fable 87, &c.—Ælian, Varia Historia, bk. 12.—Ovid, Ibis, li. 359.—Seneca, Agamemnon.
Pelŏpēia, a festival observed by the people of Elis in honour of Pelops. It was kept in imitation of Hercules, who sacrificed to Pelops in a trench, as it was usual, when the manes and the infernal gods were the objects of worship. ”

“ Mercury was angry with Pelops for throwing his son Myrtilus into the sea and depriving him of his life by law; he sought vengeance in order to make up for the death. 2. So he incited Pelops' sons, Atreus and Thyestes, to such discord that they smashed the bond of kinship. 3. So, when they were ruling the kingdom in turns, since Thyestes knew that the kingdom was fated to remain in the hands of the one who had the ram with the golden fleece (which Atreus had been in possession of since he had received the kingdom) , he seduced Europa, his brother's wife, in the hope of getting it for himself. ”

“ They have no names, but they too must be under orders from Oenomaus to attend to the horses.
5.10.7 At the very edge lies Cladeus, the river which, in other ways also, the Eleans honor most after the Alpheius. On the left from Zeus are Pelops, Hippodameia, the charioteer of Pelops, horses, and two men, who are apparently grooms of Pelops. Then the pediment narrows again, and in this part of it is represented the Alpheius. The name of the charioteer of Pelops is, according to the account of the Troezenians, Sphaerus, but the guide at Olympia called him Cillas. ”

“ Lastly, on some small R.F. vases, a bust of Perseus is depicted wearing his winged cap. [1265]
The story of Pelops is chiefly connected with Olympia, and his visit to Oinomaos; but the subjects are almost exclusively confined to the later Apulian vases. On one B.F. (Cyrenaic) kylix Pelops is depicted with the winged horses given him by Poseidon, [1266] but this is exceptional. The Olympia scenes include five episodes: (1) the arrival of Pelops at Olympia [1267] ; (2) the sacrifice or compact with Oinomaos [1268] ; (3) the race [1269] ; (4) the death of Myrtilos [1270] ”

“ Here, too, precincts were dedicated to Pelops and Hippodamia, in which sacrifices were offered to them annually; the victim presented to Pelops was a black ram, whose blood was poured into a pit. [981] Other traditions were current in antiquity of princesses who were offered in marriage to the fleetest runner and won by the victor in the race. Thus Icarius at Sparta set the wooers of his daughter Penelope to run a race; Ulysses won and wedded her. His father-in-law is said to have tried to induce him to take up his abode in Sparta ”

“ Most probably, therefore, Pelops brought with him the cultus of the patron deity of his mother-country, and made her sacred animal the symbol of the Pelopids. Æschylus compares Agamemnon himself to a lion; [112] he also compares Agamemnon with Ægisthus as a lion with a wolf. [113] Thus here above the gate the two lions, either as the sacred animals of Rhea or as the symbol [35] of the powerful dynasty of the Pelopids, have been united to the symbol of Apollo Agyieus, the guardian of the gateway. To the left of the sculpture of the lions is a large quadrangular window in the wall. ”

“ He then caused them to take the oath customary at the proclamation of a new king; and next took measures to get all who were likely to be formidable out of the country. Philammon, who had been employed in the murder of Arsinoe, he sent out as governor of Cyrene, while he committed the young king to the charge of Oenanthe and Agathocleia. Next, Pelops the son of Pelops he despatched to the court of Antiochus in Asia, to urge him to maintain his friendly relations with the court of Alexandria, and not to violate the treaty he had made with the young king’s father. ”

“ Of Pelops, according to the common account, Atreus and Thyestes were the sons. These having murdered their stepbrother, Chrysippus, were obliged to flee for safety to Mycenæ, in Argolis, where, in the course of events, they afterwards established themselves, and became famous for their wealth and for their crimes. The bloody story of these hostile brothers commences with the seduction, by Thyestes, of Aerope, the wife of Atreus ”

“ A space under the Acropolis at Athens, unoccupied till the Spartan invasions in the Peloponnesian war brought the country Attics into the town.
Peleus. Father of Achilles.
Pĕlias. King of Iolcus, usurper of his nephew Jason's rights. When Medea restored Jason's father Aeson to youth by cutting him to pieces and boiling him, she persuaded the daughters of Pelias to try the same system with their father, which resulted in his death.
Pelopids. The descendants of Pelops, many of them, as Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Menelaus, Orestes, Electra and Iphigenia, famous in tragic story. ”

“ Pelops on the Apulian vases is usually characterised as an Oriental, with richly embroidered costume and a tiara or embroidered cap. The Homeric heroes are only to be identified by inscriptions, or by the actions in which they take part, but Paris is usually in Oriental costume; in Judgment scenes he holds a lyre, but when he takes part in combats he is attired as an archer, with bow and quiver, Phrygian cap, jerkin, and trousers. Kekrops, the mythical king of Athens, usually ends in a serpent’s tail, to denote his autochthonous origin ”

“ The poet has glorified into a Peloponnesian festival what can have been no more than a local gathering in which the neighbouring chieftains took part, and the introduction of Heracles may have been an invention of the Eleans; for, according to Pausanias, it was Iphitus who first induced the Eleans, or, as he should have said, the Pisatans, to sacrifice to Heracles whom they had before regarded as their enemy. Yet there is probably some truth in the connexion of the games with Pelops’ grave, a tradition which we find also in Pindar’s great rival Bacchylides. ”

“ But a mode ought to have a distinct moral or emotional character (eidos echein ethous hê pathous) , as the Locrian, which was in use in the time of Simonides and Pindar, but went out of fashion again.' The Phrygian and Lydian, as we have seen, were said to have been brought to the Peloponnesus by the followers of Pelops. ”

“ The Eleans report, that this Pelops first built a temple to Mercury in Peloponnesus, and sacrificed to the god, in order to appease him for his having put Myrtilus to death. But .ZEtolus, who reigned after Epeus, was obliged to fly from Peloponnesus, because the sons of Apis called him to account for an involuntary murder which he had committed. For ^Etolus slew Apis, the son of Jason, and who was born in Pallantium, an Arcadian town, by running against him with his chariot in the games which are called Azani. ”

“ Pelion, Mount, sacrifices offered on the top of, at the rising of Sirius, vi. 36 n.
Pellene, Artemis at, i. 15 n. 4
Pelopidae, the, migrations of, ii. 279
Peloponnese, May Day in, ii. 143 n. 2;
worship of Poseidon in, v. 203
Pelops succeeded his father-in-law on the throne, ii. 279;
Olympic games founded in his honour, iv. 92;
restored to life, v. 181, viii. 263;
his ivory shoulder, viii. 263 sq.
—— at Olympia, ii. 300, iv. 104, xi. 90 n. 1;
sacred precinct of, ii. 300, iv. 104, 287;
black ram sacrificed to, iv. 92, 104, viii. 85
—— and Hippodamia, at Olympia, ii. ”

“ But Pelopidas, having sufficiently tried their bravery at Tegyrae, where they had fought alone, and around his own person, never afterward divided them, but keeping them entire, and as one man, gave them the first duty in the greatest battles. For as horses run brisker in a chariot than singly, not that their joint force divides the air with greater ease, but because being matched one against the other, emulation kindles and inflames their courage; thus he thought, brave men, provoking one another to noble actions, would prove most serviceable and most resolute, where all were united together. ”

“ But Pelopidas joined with Epaminondas, and, encouraging his countrymen, led them against Sparta, and, passing the Eurotas, took many of the towns, and wasted the country as far as the sea. This army consisted of seventy thousand Greeks, of which number the Thebans could not make the twelfth part; but the reputation of the men made all their allies contented to follow them as leaders, though no articles to that effect had been made. ”

“ The day for action being fixed, it was agreed upon by the exiles, that Pherenicus with the rest should stay in the Thriasian plain, while some few of the younger men tried the first danger, by endeavoring to get into the city; and, if they were surprised by their enemies, the others should take care to provide for their children and parents. Pelopidas first offered to undertake the business; then Melon, Damoclides, and Theopompus, men of noble families, who, in other things loving and faithful to one another, were constant rivals only in glory and courageous exploits. ”