Pelops

Key facts and history

Pelops's father Tantalus cut him into pieces and served him as a stew to the Olympian gods.^[4] Demeter ate the left shoulder while grieving for Persephone, but the other gods refused the meal.^[4] Pindar rejected this tradition as a malicious invention, instead relating that Poseidon took Pelops as a lover.^[4] Pelops later sought to marry Hippodamia, whose father King Oenomaus had killed eighteen previous suitors in chariot races.^[5]

As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops, a curse that plagued his descendants including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, and Menelaus.^[6] Pelops organized chariot races at Olympia as funeral games for Oenomaus, which inspired the ancient Olympic Games.^[7] After Tantalus served Pelops to the gods, the other deities reassembled his body and restored him to life, with Hephaestus fashioning an ivory replacement for the shoulder that Demeter had eaten.^[4] Pelops called upon Poseidon, his former lover, who responded by providing a chariot pulled by winged horses that had never been tamed.^[8][9]

Pelops gave a bribe to Myrtilos, the charioteer of Oinomaos, to sabotage the axle; this caused Oinomaos's death during the race.^[2]

What the cited sources add

The Theoi.com account states that Pelops was a Phrygian expelled from Sipylus by Ilus, though other traditions represent him as a native of Greece from Olenos in Achaia.^[2] The same source notes that some writers call Pelops's mother Euryanassa or Clytia.^[2] The Theoi.com account describes how the gods ordered Hermes to put Pelops's limbs into a cauldron to restore his life, while other versions say Rhea restored him.^[2] The Theoi.com account states that Pelops rapidly expanded his territory until he governed most of the western Peloponnesos and established an alliance with King Perseus through marriages between their children.^[2]

The Open Library record for ISBN 9780773508378 lists "Theopompus the historian" as a 346-page work published in 1991 by McGill-Queen's University Press.^[10]