Dear Friends of ancient mythology! This article 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. Coin: Lydia, Sardeis, Geta, AD 209-212 AE 26, 8.97g, 26.48mm, 180° obv. ΠO CEB - ΓETAC KAI Laureate head r. rev. CAPΔIANΩN B NEΩ - K - OPΩN 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 Patina Mythology (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 the Sipylos mountain. 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 betrayal of a secret. 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 mountaín. 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 of 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. (3) Pelops and Hippodameia: The whole story I have already described in detail in the article "Pelops and Hippodameia" 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 descendants 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 his death he was highly venerated in Elis as demigod and had his own altar in the temple of Zeus where already Herakles has made sacrifices. It is said that the Greeks 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). (4) The Pelopids: By Hippodameia Pelops was 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. Excursion: The Greek tragedy The Curse of the Atrids means the begin and the zenith of the 'wonder of the Greek tragedy' (Käthe Hamburger). Before there was the epos were the action stood in the center. But now, 300 years after the epos, we have the drama. And here the main emphasis is on the acting persons and their conflicts. For the first time in the history of men the Greeks have discovered man as problem. That is why the conflicts in these ancient tragedies are exemplary and eternal, and were performed despite their age over and over, or adapted by modern poets and writers. Driven to its height the conflict was not before the late Atrids, Orestes and Electra, children of Agamemnon. The slaughteries of Tantalos or Atreus seem - dramaturgically seen - not to serve so much. The tragedy covers questions like that for being, conflicts between individual and world, between human and gods, fault and expiation and the tension between character and fate. Fate or the gods bring the acting human in an undissolvable situation - the conflict which is typical for the Greek tragedy - which at last leads to the inner and outer breakdown of this person. There is no possibility to became not guilty without abandon ones own essential moral concepts, impossible for a tragic actor. The definition of tragic in this Greek sense is: The human being becomes guilty without its own guilt! This conception is lightyears away from the inflationary use of this term today. About each car accident it is said that it was tragic. It's horrible! History of Art: A group of figure on the east pediment of the temple of Zeus in Olympia depicts the chariot racing between Pelops and Oinomaos, a depiction in honour of Pelops, who should have founded the Olympic Games. We can see Pelops preparing for the racing sacrificing to Kydonian Hera. The racing itself we can see on Apulic vases, where sometimes Niobe is shown too, sister of Pelops, f.e. on the Apulic lutrophoros, c.350 BC, now in Malibu GM. On Roman sarcophagi the depiction of the racing and the accident was preferred. A dramatical scene where the horses rear up over the dead Oinomaos is found on a sarcophagus in the Louvre, c.230-240 AD. Post-antique depictions of Pelops are rare. There is an oil sketch from Rubens. I wonder why not the scene was chosen were Pelops was reanimated. That would be an appropriate scene for a sarcophagus, I think. But may be that this scene doesn't fit their dramaturgical necessities. I have added (1) the pic from a red-figured krater of the Oinomaos painter, Naples, c.380-370 BC. In the centre we see Oinomaos sacrificing, a ram is brought to him; above him Poseidon and Athena; on the right side Pelops and Hippodameia already driving their chariot over the waves; on upper left Myrtilos guiding the horses of Oinomaos. (2) the restaurated pic from an Apulic red-figured amphora from Ruovo, 360-330 BC, ascibed to the Varrese painter, now in the British Museum. In the centre Oinomaos (with helmet) performing a libation, on the left side Pelops (in Phrygian garment) resting on his spear, between them a column, dedicated to Zeus (inscription ΔΙΟΣ; above them the head of Periphas, a mythic ancient Attic king, who was because of his piety more worshipped than Zeus and then raised to heaven, possibly a former suitor of Hippodameia; on the right side a group consisting of Myrtilos, Eros and Aphrodite; on the left side Hippodameia led by a Muse (or her mother?) (A detailed description of this picture you find at Gaifmann, see bibliography) (3) A pic of the so-called 'Throne of Pelops' on the Sipylos mountain, near todays Manisa/Turkey Sources: (1) Apollodoros, Bibliotheke (2) Homer, Odyssee, XI (3) Ovid, Metamorphoses (4) Diodor, Bibliotheke (5) Pindar, Odes (6) Pausanias, Periegesis Tragedies: (1) Aischylos: Oresteia (2) Sophokles: Electra, Antigone (3) Euripides: Electra, Orestes Modern adaptations: (1) Gerhart Hauptmann, Die Atridentetralogie (2) Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra (3) Jean Giraudoux, Electra (4) Eugene O'Neill, Mourning becomes Electra (5) Jean Paul Sartre, The Flies Bibliography: (1) Aghion/Barbillon/Lissarrague, Lexikon der antiken Götter und Heroen, 1994 (2) Milette Gaifman, The Libation of Oinomaos, in Dill/Walde, Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen, Konstruktionen, de Gruyter 2009 (3) Käthe Hamburger, Von Sophokles zu Sartre, Griechische Dramenfiguren antik und modern, 1962 (4) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, 1770 (5) Karl Kerenyi, Die Mythologie der Griechen (6) Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie (7) Der kleine Pauly (8) Robert von Ranke-Graves, Griechische Mythologie (9) Wilhelm H.Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Literatur, 1884 (10) Gustav Schwab, Sagen des klassischen Altertums, 1840 (11) Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes. Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen. Hamburg 1946 (12) Kurt Steinmann, Meisterstücke der griechischen und römischen Literatur - Interpretiert, Reclam 998 Best regards
