Pelops and the Curse of the House of AtreusWith this mythylogical article I want to say
Good Bye for the rest of this year. I don't think it's a true
Christmas gift because this coin leads us in a sequence of murders and atrocities over several generations which freezes the blood in our veins
still today. It is doubtless the most important cycle of ancient Greek myths which has generated the interest of poets and dramatists until our days. I only mention Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra, Jean Giraudoux, Electre, Eugene O'Neill, Mourning becomes Electra and Jean Paul Sartre, Les mouches.
The coin:Lydia, Sardeis,
Geta, AD 209-212
AE 26, 8.97g, 26.48mm, 180°
obv. PO
CEB -
GETAC KAI
Head, laureate, r.
rev. CARDIANWN B NEW - K - ORWN
Pelops, son of the Lydian
king Tantalos, in short
chiton and with
chlamys running
r. and seizing a prancing wild
horse by the
head; beneath
horse, herbage
ref.
cf. BMC 264, 168; not in Aulock, Copenhagen,
Lindgren, Tübingen, Righetti.
very
rare, F+, a
bit rough olive-green
patinaMythology(1) Tantalos:
Pelop's father was Tantalos, an important
king in
Phrygia or
Pamphylia. Tantalos was a son of
Zeus with the nymph Pluto, according to others a son of Tmolos.
His residence was Sipylos. He was immensely rich. The pun 'Talents of Tantalos' was an ancient phrase for wealth. As son of
Zeus he enjoyed the honour to dine at the table of the gods and invited them too to be guests in
his palace. From
his wife Euryanassa he
had the sons Pelops and Broteus, and the daughter Niobe.
The myth reports a series of crimes done by Tantalos: He should have stolen nectar and ambrosia from the gods and given to
his companions, which later has been reinterpreted as breach of secrecy.
Another crime was theft together with perjury: When
Zeus was
still an infant on
Crete Hephaistos has created a golden mastiff for Rhea to watch over
Zeus. This mastiff has been stolen by Pandareos, son of Merops in
Lydia, and brought to Tantalos who hid it on the Sipylos mountaÃn. When Pandareos wanted back the mastiff Tantalos swore by
Zeus that he
had never seen this
dog.
Zeus sent
Hermes to him but Tantalos insisted on
his oath.
Hermes indeed found the
dog and
Zeus slew Tantalos with
his thunderbolt under a rock of the Sipylos mountain.
His most atrocious crime and the most
notorious of all was this: Once when he has invited the gods for a banquet, he - in
his hybris - slaughtered, cooked and served
his son Pelops to the gods. Their disgust prevented them to eat something. Only Demeter distracted due to the rape of her daughter
Persephone has eaten a shoulder.
Nemesis then put him together again and the gods breathed life into him. Demeter replaced the lost shoulder by an ivory one. From this time on the Pelopids, the descendants of Pelops,
had all a white mark on their shoulder.
On the other hand Tantalos is described as a man pious and devoted to the gods, toward humans very kind and a great teacher. So we find the interpretation too that it was not an attempt to try the gods but an
act of religious sense of duty and highest adoration that he gave them
his most valuable possession which was
his son Pelops.
His punishment was terrible: He was condemned to stay eternally in the Eridanos, the
notorious underworld stream, but could never reach the water in
his thirst, which sank everytime he tried to drink. In front of him lured wine grapes which went away every time he wanted to
pick them in
his hunger, and above him a big rock was hanging which threatened to come crushing down every moment. This rock was seen as punishment for
his perjury against
Zeus and was probably
his oldest punishment. The other punishments seem to be added in later times. Tantalos is considered as the great penitent so at Dante too where he is located on the 6th terrace of the Purgatorium.
(2) Pelops:
When Pelops was reanimated again he became an exceedingly beautiful
youth so that Poseidon fall in love with him at the first glance. He abducted him to the Olympos and made him
his cup-bearer and lover like
Zeus has done later with Ganymedes.
When Tantalos once raped Ganymedes, son of
king Tros from
Troy, a war occured. After the death of
his father Pelops took the throne and continued the war. But the war passed off unhappily and finally
Ilos from
Troy compelled Pelops to flee fom
Phrygia to Pisa on the
Peloponnesos. For that Poseidon has given to Pelops as a present
horse and cart by which he was able to go over the sea so fast that their feet stay dry.
In Pisa Oinomaos, son of Ares, was
king of Elis. He
had a beautiful daughter, Hippodameia. Pelops asked for Hippodameia. But Oinomaos has always prevented a marriage because an oracle has predicted that he would be killed by the hand of
his son-in-law or because he himself loved
his daughter illegally. He required from the suitors to win a
chariot racing against him. The racing went from Pisa to the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmos and back again. Oinomaos conceeded to the suitors an advantage - he always sacrificed a ram before he started, but they
had to get Hippodameia in their chariots. The winner should get the bride and the entire kingdom. But nobody has succeeded. All were killed and with their heads he has decorated the roof of
his palace.
Myrtilos, son of
Hermes, was stable master in Elis and charioteer of Oinomaos. Pelops promised him half of the kingdom and the right to spend the wedding night with Hippodameia if he was willing to betray
his master. Hippodameia who was fallen in love with the beautiful Pelops persuaded Myrtilos to change the iron posts of the wheels against waxen ones. And so he did, and in the racing the
chariot of Oinomaos fell apart and he was dragged to death. Pelops got Hippodameia and became
king in Elis.
It is told that Myrtilos was fallen in love with Hippodameia too and has claimed the wedding night for himself. But after the racing Pelops won't fulfill
his promises, or Myrtilos tried to rape Hippodameia, and it came to a struggle. Pelops pushed Myrtilos over a cliff into the sea, were he drowned. After Myrtilos this sea was called 'Myrtoic' but certainly this name arose from a different version of this myth (Euripides). Before he died Myrtilos cursed Pelops and
his descendants. This was the origin of the Curse of the Pelopids and Atrids, not the crimes of Tantalos as could be read sometimes. To absolve himself Pelops erected a temple for
Hermes at Pheneos - the first in
Greece - and Myrtilos was buried behind the temple, a heroon, at which annually was celebrated a nightly sacrifice to honour him. According to others Myrtilos was set by
Hermes to the sky as 'waggoner'.
Pindar reports the version that Pelops has won the racing without
fraud alone by the rapidity of
his horses which he has got from Poseidon. So on the east
pediment of the temple of
Zeus in Olympia, where the racing between Pelops and Oinomaos is depicted Myrtilos couldn't be found.
Nor on the chast of Kypselos, but on the attached pics.
When Pelops has become master of Elis he succeeded in conquering many of the neighboring realms so that the entire peninsula was named
Peloponnesos after him, literally 'Isle of Pelops'. He
his seen as one of the great Greek founder figures. Only
king Stamphylos of Arcadia withstood him. So he invited him perfidiously, killed him, hacked him to pieces and scattered
his parts over the land. This crime was so awfull that a great starving occured in all
Greece.
Even so that he has erected a temple for
Hermes because of the murder of Myrtilos and has in honour of
Zeus considerably enlarged the Olympic Games and brought to hightest reputation,
his desendants
had to suffer from
his crimes. They were compelled from Elis and spread over the
Peloponnesos. Pelops himself died peaceful after 59 years of reign. After hid death he was highly venerated in Elis as demigod and
had his own
altar in the temple of
Zeus where already
Herakles made sacrifices.
It is said that the
Greece were not able to conquer
Troy without
his ivory shoulder blade. But the ship which should have bring it to
Troy has sank in a storm, and at the same time in Elis a plague broke out. The Eleians sent a delegation to the oracle of
Delphi. Fortunately in the same moment Damarmenos, a fisherman from Eretreia, came to the oracle, asking for a big shoulder blade he has recently fished out of the sea. When they heard that this was the sought after bone of Pelops they overwhelmed the fisherman with gifts, took it back to Elis and made the fisherman and
his descendants to guardians of the relic (Pausanias).
(3) The Pelopids:
Pelops was by Hippodameia ancestor of a great house, called the Pelopids.
His sons were Atreus, Thyestes and Alkathoos,
his daughter Eurydike. Among them the atrocities continued. The brothers, instigated by their mother Hippodameia, killed their half-brother Chrysippos. They were cursede by Pelops and
had to flee. They went to Argos/Mykenai. There Atreus bekame father of Agamemnon and Menelaos. When later Thyestes took away from Atreus the golden
lamb and the golden
scepter - both pledges of the reign over Argos - Atreus took revenge on him by slaughtering
his children and serving them to him. A motive shift in
mythology?
Thyestes - connected to Atreus in acrid hate - became father of Aigisthos who later killed Agamemnon, son of Atreus. I skip the chain of atrocities between Atreus and Thyestes. Alkathoos later became grandfather of
Ajax the Great, the Telamonian. Eurydike (according to Diodor) married Elektryon, son of
Perseus, and gave birth to Alkmene, mother of
Herakles.
The descendants of Atreus are called Atrids. Here the curse culminated: After returning from
Troy Agamemnon, who has marooned
his daughter Iphigenia in Tauris, was killed by
his wife Klytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos. He was revenged by
his children Orestes and Electra who took on a matricide because of that. In a famous trial on the Areopagos Orestes was absolved and after five generations finally the curse has been terminated. But that is another story.
I have added a pic of the so-called 'Throne of Pelops' on the Sipylos mountain, near Manisa/Turkey
(will be continued)