Pelops

Also Known As: Greek Πέλοψ; called Pelops the Lydian or the Phrygian; son of Tantalus
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Restored to life after being butchered and served to the gods, he carried a shoulder of ivory and drove a chariot given him by Poseidon whose axles stayed dry across the sea.
Role in Mythos: He won Hippodameia by rigging a lethal chariot race, took the kingdom of Pisa, gave his name to the Peloponnese, and founded the line whose murders run through Atreus, Thyestes and Agamemnon.
Relation to Humans: Pelops was himself mortal, and after his death the Eleans honoured him above every other hero at Olympia with a night sacrifice of a black ram poured into a pit. Anyone who ate that meat was forbidden to enter the temple of Zeus, which made his worship something to be approached carefully rather than casually.

Once a year, after dark, the magistrates of Elis brought a black ram into a walled grove inside the sanctuary at Olympia and killed it over a pit. The blood went down into the ground instead of up in smoke, because the one it was owed to was under the ground. Whoever ate that meat was barred from the temple of Zeus standing a short walk away. The Eleans preferred Pelops above all the other heroes there, as much as they preferred Zeus above the other gods, and the reason had a great deal to do with what had been done to him at a dinner table.

His father Tantalus was a favourite of the gods, rich from the gold of the country around Mount Sipylos in Lydia, and invited to eat with the immortals. The story that made him infamous is that he decided to test them. He killed his son, cut him into pieces, boiled him, and set the meal before his guests. The gods knew at once and stopped. Only Demeter, still numb with grief for her stolen daughter, ate without looking, and what she swallowed was the shoulder. When the others gathered the pieces back into the cauldron and brought the boy out alive and more beautiful than before, one part was missing. They fitted an ivory shoulder in its place, and it showed against his skin for the rest of his life. Pindar hated this version and said so in public. In his telling, Poseidon fell in love with the boy at that perfectly decent feast and carried him up to Olympus, exactly as Zeus would later take Ganymede, and the whole cannibal rumour was invented by envious neighbours when the household could not explain where the child had gone. Even Pindar kept the ivory. He simply had Pelops born with it, drawn from the cauldron of the Fates already shining at the shoulder.

Tantalus came to a bad end regardless, with a boulder hung over his head forever, punished for stealing nectar and ambrosia and passing them round to his drinking companions.

His son grew up and was driven out of Sipylos by Ilus the Phrygian, and crossed to Greece with what he had. What he wanted was in Pisa, in the western Peloponnese: Hippodameia, daughter of King Oenomaus. Her father had been told by an oracle that his daughter’s husband would kill him, and some said he wanted the girl himself. Either way he had built a competition no one could survive. A suitor took Hippodameia up onto his own chariot and drove for the Isthmus of Corinth; Oenomaus finished a sacrifice, then came after him in full armour with a spear given by Ares and horses faster than anything on the plain. When he caught them he killed the man. The heads were nailed to the front of the house. Pausanias, walking there centuries later, was shown a single surviving wooden column and told the rest had rotted away.

Pelops went down to the sea alone at night and called Poseidon out of the water. He asked for the god’s help against the brazen spear, and the god gave him a gleaming chariot and horses that ran tireless and left the axles dry even through the sea. That was one half of the plan. The other half was Myrtilus, son of Hermes and Oenomaus’ own charioteer, who was in love with Hippodameia and could be reached. Depending on who tells it, he was promised half the kingdom, or a night with the bride, or was persuaded by the girl herself. What he did is constant across the accounts: he left the linchpins out of the wheel-boxes, or replaced them with wax. In the race the wheels came off at speed, and Oenomaus was tangled in his own reins and dragged until he died, cursing the charioteer as he went and praying that Myrtilus would die by the hand of Pelops.

That prayer was answered within days. On the road home, Pelops stepped away to fetch water for his thirsty wife, and Myrtilus put his hands on her. Pelops threw him off a headland into the water near Cape Geraestus, and the sea there took his name. Going down, Myrtilus cursed the house of Pelops, and the curse worked its way through the family for generations, through Atreus and Thyestes and the children they served each other, down to Agamemnon.

Pelops himself prospered. He went to the stream of Ocean and was purified by Hephaestus, came back to Pisa, took the kingdom, and conquered enough of the surrounding country to rename the whole peninsula after himself. He built the first temple of Hermes in the Peloponnese, which reads less like piety than like a man settling accounts with an angry god whose son he had drowned. He held the games at Olympia more splendidly than anyone before him. His anger outlived his luck: when his son Chrysippus died, Hippodameia left him and withdrew to Midea in the Argolid.

His powers were never really his own. The chariot was a loan, the beauty was a gift that put him in Poseidon’s debt, and the victory was bought from a servant. He could not be killed by the ordinary run of chariot accidents and spear thrusts that had accounted for every earlier suitor, but nothing in his story suggests he was proof against anything else. He aged, he grieved, he was buried by the ford of the Alpheios.

The bone outlasted him. During the long siege of Troy the seers told the Greeks the city would not fall until they fetched the bow of Heracles and a bone of Pelops, so a shoulder blade was carried out of Pisa to the camp. The ship bringing it back was wrecked off Euboea. Years after the war a fisherman from Eretria named Damarmenos hauled it up in his net, was astonished by the size of it, and buried it in the sand while he went to ask Delphi what he had. The priestess told him to give it back to the Eleans, who had come to her in the same season asking for relief from a plague.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Pelops in Greek mythology?

Pelops was a Lydian prince, son of Tantalus, who came to Greece, won the kingdom of Pisa in Elis, and gave his name to the Peloponnese. He is best known for being killed and served to the gods by his own father, restored to life with an ivory shoulder, and later winning a deadly chariot race for the hand of Hippodameia.

Why did Pelops have an ivory shoulder?

When Tantalus butchered and cooked his son and served him to the gods, Demeter was distracted by grief for her missing daughter and ate part of the shoulder before anyone realised what the meal was. The gods restored Pelops to life, but that piece was gone, so they fitted an ivory shoulder in its place. Pindar rejected the cannibal story entirely and said Pelops was simply born with the ivory shoulder.

How did Pelops beat Oenomaus in the chariot race?

Pelops bribed Myrtilus, the charioteer of Oenomaus, to sabotage his master’s chariot by leaving out the linchpins that held the wheels on the axle. During the race the wheels came off and Oenomaus was dragged to death by his own horses. Pelops also drove a chariot and immortal horses given to him by Poseidon.

What is the curse of Pelops?

After winning Hippodameia, Pelops threw Myrtilus into the sea rather than pay what he had promised, and Myrtilus cursed the house of Pelops as he died. That curse is the traditional explanation for the run of murders among his descendants, including Atreus, Thyestes and Agamemnon.

How was Pelops worshipped at Olympia?

Pelops had a walled sanctuary called the Pelopion inside the Altis at Olympia, said to have been set apart for him by Heracles. The magistrates of Elis sacrificed a black ram to him each year, the blood going into a pit rather than onto an altar fire, and anyone who ate the meat of that victim was forbidden to enter the temple of Zeus.