Oenomaus

King of Pisa in the Alpheus valley of Elis, son of Ares — his mother given variously as Harpina daughter of Asopus (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 3.10.1 + *Epit.* 2.4) or the Pleiad Sterope (Pausanias 5.10.6–7 + scholia on Pind. *Ol.* 1) — and father of Hippodamia, fated by an oracle he went to great lengths to thwart to be killed by his son-in-law (Apollod. *Epit.* 2.4–9; Pindar *Olympian* 1.79–88; Hyginus *Fabulae* 84 + 253; Diodorus 4.73.1–6; Pausanias 5.10.6–7 on the chariot-column at Olympia and the tumulus of Oenomaus). He possessed from his father Ares a team of winged mares and a spear (or a chariot) said to run faster than any mortal animal, and used the advantage to kill every previous suitor of his daughter in the chariot-race. The race Pelops won — whether by Poseidon's gift of divine horses (Pind. *Ol.* 1.87) or by the wax-axle-pin trick of the bribed charioteer Myrtilus (Apollod. *Epit.* 2.7–8) — closed the sequence. Oenomaus, thrown from the disintegrating chariot, died with a curse on Myrtilus that through Myrtilus's own death at Pelops's hands would become the curse on the house of Pelops itself, driving the Atreid cycle of Thyestes and Agamemnon.

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