r. Pelops is also styled ‘Cronian One’, or ‘Horse-beater’; and the Achaeans claim him as their ancestor.26
1. Apollonius Rhodius: Argonautica ii. 358 and 790; Sophocles: Ajax 1292; Pausanias: ii. 22.4 and vi. 22.1; Pindar: Olympian Odes 1.24.
2. Servius on Virgil’s Georgics iii. 7; Lucian: Charidemus 19; Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 4.
3. Diodorus Siculus: iv. 73; Hyginus: Fabula 250; Poetic Astronomy ii. 21; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: i. 752; Pausanias: v. 1.5; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 149.
4. Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 21; Fabula 84; Pausanias: viii. 20.2 and vi. 22. 2; Lactantius on Statius’s Thebaid vi. 336; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.
5. Plutarch: Greek Questions 52; Pausanias: v. 5. 2 and 9. 2.
6. Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 4; Lucian: Charidemus 19; Pausanias: v. 10. 2, v. 17. 4 and vi. 21. 6; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 73.
7. Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 5; Lucian: loc. cit.; Pausanias: v. 14. 5; Diodorus Siculus: loc. cit.
8. Servius on Virgil’s Georgics iii. 7; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 166; Lucian: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 84; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
9. Pausanias: viii. 14. 7; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 756; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
10. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pindar: Olympian Odes i. 79 ff.; Ovid: Ibis 365; Hyginus: Fabula 84; Pausanias: vi. 21.6–7 and 20.8.
11. Hyginus: Fabula 224; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 156 and 162; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius: i. 752; Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 1002; Pausanias: viii. 14.7.
12. Lucian: Charidemus 19; Tzetzes; On Lycophron 159.
13. Pindar: Olympian Odes i. 65 ff. and i. 79; Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 3; Pausanias: v. 17.4.
14. Pausanias: v.13.4 and 10.2; Theon: On Aratus p. 21; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad i. 38.
15. Hyginus: Fabula 84; Scholiast on Horace’s Odes i. 1; Pausanias: viii. 14.7.
16. Pausanias: vi. 21. 5 and v. 10. 2; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad: loc. cit.; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 753.
17. Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 7; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 156; Apollonius Rhodius: i. 752 ff.; Pausanias: vi. 20. 8.
18. Pindar: Olympic Odes i. 87; Lucian: Charidemus 19; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 73; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
19. Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 8; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad ii. 104; Pausanias: viii. 14.8; Hyginus: Fabula 84.
20. Strabo: x. 1. 7; Sophocles: Electra 508 ff.; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: viii. 14.7.
21. Hyginus: Poetic Astronomy ii. 13; Pausanias: loc. cit. and viii. 14. 8; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
22. Apollodorus: Epitome ii. 9; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 73; Thucydides: i. 9; Plutarch: Theseus 3.
23. Pausanias: v. 1. 5; v. 8. 1 and vi. 20.8; Apollodorus: iii. 12.6.
24. Pausanias: vi. 21. 7 and 22. 1.
25. Pausanias: V. 13. 1–2; vi. 22. 1; ii. 14. 3; vi. 19. 3 and ix. 41. 1; Apollodorus: ii. 7.2; Pindar: Olympian Odes i. 90 ff.; Scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes i. 146; Homer: Iliad ii. 100 ff.
26. Pindar: Olympian Odes iii. 23; Homer: Iliad ii. 104; Pausanias: v. 25. 5.
1. According to Pausanias and Apollodorus, Tantalus never left Asia Minor; but other mythographers refer to him and to Pelops as native kings of Greece. This suggests that their names were dynastic titles taken by early Greek colonists to Asia Minor, where they were attested by hero-shrines; and brought back by emigrants before the Achaean invasion of the Peloponnese in the thirteenth century B.C. It is known from Hittite inscriptions that Hellenic kings reigned in Pamphylia and Lesbos as early as the fourteenth century B.C. Pelopo-Tantalids seem to have ousted the Cretanized dynasty of ‘Oenomaus’ from the Peloponnesian High Kingship.
2. The horse, which had been a sacred animal in Pelasgian Greece long before the cult of the Sun-chariot, was a native European pony dedicated to the Moon, not the Sun (see 75. 3). The larger Trans-Caspian horse came to Egypt with the Hyksos invaders in 1850 B.C. – horse chariotry displaced ass chariotry in the Egyptian armed forces about the year 1500 B.C. – and had reached Crete before Cnossus fell a century later. Oenomaus’s religious ban on mules should perhaps be associated with the death of Cillus: in Greece, as at Rome, the ass cult was suppressed (see 83. 2) when the sun-chariot became the symbol of royalty. Much the same religious reformation took place at Jerusalem (2 Kings xxiii. 11), where a tradition survived in Josephus’s time of an earlier ass cult (Josephus: Against Apion ii. 7 and 10). Helius of the Sun-chariot, an Achaean deity, was then identified in different cities with solar Zeus or solar Poseidon, but the ass became the beast of Cronus, whom Zeus and Poseidon had dethroned, or of Pan, Silenus, and other old-fashioned Pelasgian god-lings. There was also a solar Apollo; since his hatred of asses is mentioned by Pindar, it will have been Cillaean Apollo to whom hecatombs of asses were offered by the Hyperboreans (Pindar: Pythian Odes x. 30 ff.).
3. Oenomaus, who represented Zeus as the incarnate Sun, is therefore called a son of Asterië, who ruled Heaven (see 88. 1), rather than a similarly named Pleiad; and Queen Hippodameia, by marriage to whom he was enroyalled, represented Hera as the incarnate Moon. Descent remained matrilinear in the Peloponnese, which assured the goodwill of the conservative peasantry. Nor might the King’s reign be prolonged beyond a Great Year of one hundred months, in the last of which the solar and lunar calendars coincided; he was then fated to be destroyed by horses. As a further concession to the older cult at Pisa, where Zeus’s representative had been killed by his tanist each mid-summer (see 53. 5), Oenomaus agreed to die a mock death at seven successive mid-winters, on each occasion appointing a surrogate to take his place for twenty-four hours and ride in the sun-chariot beside the Queen. At the close of this day, the surrogate was killed in a chariot crash, and the King stepped out from the tomb where he had been lurking (see 41. 1 and 123. 4), to resume his reign. This explains the myth of Oenomaus and the suitors, another version of which appears in that of Evenus (see 74. e). The mythographers must be mistaken when they mention ‘twelve or thirteen’ suitors. These numbers properly refer to the lunations – alternately twelve and thirteen – of a solar year, not to the surrogates; thus in the chariot race at Olympia twelve circuits of the stadium were made in honour of the Moon-goddess. Pelops is a type of lucky eighth prince (see 81. 8) spared the chariot crash and able to despatch the old king with his own sceptre-spear.
4. This annual chariot crash was staged in the Hippodrome. The surrogate could guide his horses – which seem, from the myth of Glaucus (see 71. a), to have been maddened by drugs – down the straight without coming to grief, but where the course bent around a white marble statue, called the Marmaranax (‘marble king’), or the Horse-scarer, the outer wheel flew off for want of a lynch-pin, the chariot collapsed, and the horses dragged the surrogate to death. Myrtle was the death-tree, that of the thirteenth month, at the close of which the chariot crash took place (see 101. 1); hence Myrtilus is said to have removed the metal lynch-pins, and replaced them with wax ones – the melting of wax also caused the death of Icarus, the Sun-king’s surrogate – and laid a curse upon the House of Pelops.
5. In the second half of the myth, Myrtilus has been confused with the surrogate. As interrex, the surrogate was entitled to ride beside the Queen in the sun-chariot, and to sleep with her during the single night of his reign; but, at dawn on the following day, the old King destroyed him and, metaphorically, rode on in his sun-chariot to the extreme west, where he was purified in the Ocean stream. Myrtilus’s fall from the chariot into the sea is a telescoping of myths: a few miles to the east of the Hippodrome, where the Isthmian Games took place (see 71. b), the surrogate ‘Melicertes’, in whose honour they had been founded, was flung over a cliff (see 96.3) and an identical ceremony was probably performed at Geraestus, where Myrtilus died. Horse-scarers are also reported from Thebes and Iolcus (see 71. b), which suggests that there, too, chariot crashes were staged in the hippodromes. But since the Olympian Hippodrome, sacred to solar Zeus, and the Isthmian Hippodrome, sacred to solar Poseidon, were both associated with the legend of Pelops, the mythographers have p
resented the contest as a cross-country race between them. Lesbos enters the story perhaps because ‘Oenomaus’ was a Lesbian dynastic title.
6. Amphion’s entry into this myth, though a Theban, is explained by his being also a native of Sicyon on the Isthmus (see 76. a). ‘Myrto’ will have been a title of the Sea-goddess as destroyer, the first syllable standing for ‘sea’, as in Myrtea, ‘sea-goddess’; Myrtoessa, a longer form of Myrto, was one of Aphrodite’s titles. Thus Myrtilus may originally mean ‘phallus of the sea’: myr-tylos.
7. Pelops hacks Stymphalus in pieces, as he himself is said to have been treated by Tantalus; this more ancient form of the royal sacrifice has been rightly reported from Arcadia. The Pelopids appear indeed to have patronized several local cults, beside that of the Sun-chariot: namely the Arcadian shepherd cult of oak and ram, attested by Pelops’s connexion with Tantalus and his sacrifice of a black ram at Olympia; the partridge cult of Crete, Troy, and Palestine, attested by the cordax dance; the Titan cult, attested by Pelops’s title of ‘Cronian’; the porpoise cult (see 108.5); and the cult of the ass-god, in so far as Cillus’s ghost assisted him in the race.
8. The butchering of Marmax’s mares may refer to Oenomaus’s coronation ceremony (see 81. 4), which involved mare-sacrifice. A ‘Cydonian apple’, or quince, will have been in the hand of the Death-goddess Athene, to whom Pelops sacrificed, as his safe-conduct to the Elysian Fields (see 32. 1; 53.5 and 133. 4); and the white poplar, used in his heroic rites at Olympia, symbolized the hope of reincarnation (see 31. 5 and 134.f) after he had been hacked in pieces – because those who went to Elysium were granted the prerogative of rebirth (see 31. c). A close parallel to the bloodshed at Pelops’s Olympic altar is the scourging of young Spartans who were bound to the image of Upright Artemis (see 116. 4). Pelops was, in fact, the victim, and suffered in honour of the goddess Hippodameia (see 110. 3).
110
THE CHILDREN OF PELOPS
IN gratitude to Hera for facilitating her marriage with Pelops, Hippodameia summoned sixteen matrons, one from every city of Elis, to help her institute the Heraean Games. Every fourth year, ever since, the Sixteen Matrons, their successors, have woven a robe for Hera and celebrated the Games; which consist of a single race between virgins of different ages, the competitors being handicapped according to their years, with the youngest placed in front. They run clad in tunics of less than knee length, their right breasts bared, their hair flying free. Chloris, Niobe’s only surviving daughter, was the first victrix in these games; the course of which has been fixed at five-sixths of the Olympic circuit. The prize is an olive wreath, and a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera; a victrix may also dedicate a statue of herself in her own name.1
b. The Sixteen Matrons once acted as peace-makers between the Pisans and the Eleans. Now they also organize two groups of dancers, one in honour of Hippodameia, the other in honour of Physcoa, the Elean. Physcoa bore Narcaeus to Dionysus, a renowned warrior who founded the sanctuary of Athene Narcaea and was the first Elean to worship Dionysus. Since some of the sixteen cities no longer exist, the Sixteen Matrons are now supplied by the eight Elean tribes, a pair from each. Like the umpires, they purify themselves, before the Games begin, with the blood of a suitable pig and with water drawn from the Pierian Spring which one passes on the road between Olympia and Elis.2
c. The following are said to have been children of Pelops and Hippodameia: Pittheus of Troezen; Atreus and Thyestes; Alcathous, not the one killed by Oenomaus; the Argonaut Hippalcus, Hippalcmus, or Hippalcimus; Copreus the herald; Sciron the bandit; Epidaurus the Argive, sometimes called the son of Apollo;3 Pleisthenes; Dias; Cybosurus; Corinthius; Hippasus; Cleon; Argeius; Aelinus; Astydameia, whom some call the mother of Amphitryon; Lysidice, whose daughter Hippothoë was carried off by Poseidon to the Echinadian Islands, and there bore Taphius; Eurydice, whom some call the mother of Alcmene; Nicippe; Antibia;4 and lastly Archippe, mother of Eurystheus and Alcyone.5
d. The Megarians, in an attempt to obliterate the memory of how Minos captured their city, and to suggest that King Nisus was peaceably succeeded by his son-in-law Megareus, and he in turn by his son-in-law, Alcathous, son of Pelops, say that Megareus had two sons, the elder of whom, Timalcus, was killed at Aphidnae during the invasion of Attica by the Dioscuri; and that, when the younger, Euippus, was killed by the lion of Cithaeron, Megareus promised his daughter Euaechme, and his throne, to whoever avenged Euippus. Forthwith, Alcathous killed the lion and, becoming king of Megara, built a temple there to Apollo the Hunter and Artemis the Huntress. The truth is, however, that Alcathous came from Elis to Megara immediately after the death of Nisus and the sack of the city; that Megareus never reigned in Megara; and that Alcathous sacrificed to Apollo and Poseidon as ‘Previous Builders’, and then rebuilt the city wall on new foundations, the course of the old wall having been obliterated by the Cretans.6
e. Alcathous was the father of Ischepolis; of Callipolis; of Iphinoë, who died a virgin, and at whose tomb, between the Council Hall and the shrine of Alcathous, Megarian brides pour libations – much as the Delian brides dedicate their hair to Hecaerge and Opis; also of Automedusa, who bore Iolaus to Iphicles; and of Periboea, who married Telamon, and whose son Ajax succeeded Alcathous as King of Megara. Alcathous’s elder son, Ischepolis, perished in the Calydonian Hunt; and Callipolis, the first Megarian to hear the sorrowful news, rushed up to the Acropolis, where Alcathous was offering burnt sacrifices to Apollo, and flung the faggots from the altar in token of mourning. Unaware of what had happened, Alcathous raged at his impiety and struck him dead with a faggot.7
f. Ischepolis and Euippus are buried in the Law Courts; Megareus on the right side of the ascent to the second Megarian Acropolis. Alcathous’s hero-shrine is now the public Record Office; and that of Timalcus, the Council Hall.8
g. Chrysippus also passed as a son of Pelops and Hippodameia; but was, in fact, a bastard, whom Pelops had begotten on the nymph Astyoche,9 a Danaid. Now it happened that Laius, when banished from Thebes, was hospitably received by Pelops at Pisa, but fell in love with Chrysippus, to whom he taught the charioteer’s art; and, as soon as the sentence of banishment was annulled, carried the boy off in his chariot, from the Nemean Games, and brought him to Thebes as his catamite.10 Some say that Chrysippus killed himself for shame; others, that Hippodameia, to prevent Pelops from appointing Chrysippus his successor over the heads of her own sons, came to Thebes, where she tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to kill the boy by throwing him down a well. When both refused to murder their father’s guest, Hippodameia, at dead of night, stole into Laius’s chamber and, finding him asleep, took down his sword from the wall and plunged it into his bedfellow’s belly. Laius was at once accused of the murder, but Chrysippus had seen Hippodameia as she fled, and accused her with his last breath.11
h. Meanwhile, Pelops marched against Thebes to recover Chrysippus but, finding that Laius was already imprisoned by Atreus and Thyestes, nobly pardoned him, recognizing that only an overwhelming love had prompted this breach of hospitality. Some say that Laius, not Thamyris, or Minos, was the first pederast; which is why the Thebans, far from condemning the practice, maintain a regiment, called the Sacred Band, composed entirely of boys and their lovers.12
i. Hippodameia fled to Argolis, and there killed herself; but later, in accordance with an oracle, her bones were brought back to Olympia, where women enter her walled sanctuary once a year to offer her sacrifices. At one of the turns of the Hippodrome stands Hippodameia’s bronze statue, holding a ribbon with which to decorate Pelops for his victory.13
1. Pausanias: v. 16.2–3.
2. Pausanias: v. 16. 3–5.
3. Apollodorus: iii. 12.7; ii. 5. 1 and ii. 26. 3; Epitome ii. 10 and i. 1; Hyginus: Fabulae 84 and 14; Scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes i. 144.
4. Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 5; Apollodorus: ii. 4.5; Plutarch: Theseus 6; Diodorus Siculus: iv. 9. 1; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad xix. 119.
5. Tzetzes: Chiliades ii.
172 and 192; Scholiast on Thucydides: i. 9; Apollodorus: loc. cit.
6. Pausanias: i. 43. 4; i. 41. 4–5 and i. 42.2.
7. Pausanias: i. 42. 2 and 7 and i. 43.4; Apollodorus: ii. 4. 11.
8. Pausanias: i. 43. 2 and 4; i. 42. 1 and 3.
9. Scholiast on Pindar’s Olympian Odes i. 144; Hyginus: Fabula 85; Plutarch: Parallel Stories 33.
10. Apollodorus: iii. 5. 5; Hyginus: Fabulae 85 and 271; Athenaeus: xiii. 79.
11. Scholiast on Euripides’s Phoenician Women 1760; Plutarch: Parallel Stories 33; Hyginus: Fabula 85; Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 813.
12. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Plutarch: loc. cit.; Aelian: Varia Historia xiii. 5.
13. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: vi. 20. 4 and 10.
1. The Heraean Games took place on the day before the Olympic Games. They consisted of a girls’ foot race, originally for the office of High-priestess to Hera (see 60. 4), and the victrix, who wore the olive as a symbol of peace and fertility, became one with the goddess by partaking of her sacred cow. The Sixteen Matrons may once have taken turns to officiate as the High-priestess’s assistant during the sixteen seasons of the four-year Olympiad – each wheel of the royal chariot represented the solar year, and had four spokes, like a fire-wheel or swastika. ‘Narcaeus’ is clearly a back-formation from Athene Narcaea (‘benumbing’), a death-goddess. The matrons who organized the Heraean Games, which had once involved human sacrifice, propitiated the goddess with pig’s blood, and then washed themselves in running water. Hippodameia’s many children attest the strength of the confederation presided over by the Pelopid dynasty – all their names are associated with the Peloponnese or the Isthmus.
2. Alcathous’s murder of his son Callipolis at the altar of Apollo has probably been deduced from an icon which showed him offering his son as a burnt sacrifice to the ‘previous builder’, the city-god Melicertes, or Moloch, when he refounded Megara – as a king of Moab also did (Joshua vi. 26). Moreover, like Samson and David, he had killed a lion in ritual combat. Corinthian mythology has many close affinities with Palestinian (see 67. 1).