Pelops

Lydian prince of the house of Tantalus, eponym of the Peloponnese (the 'Island of Pelops'), father of Atreus and Thyestes and so patriarch of the whole Argive-Mycenaean royal line that drives the Trojan War. In the older tradition his father Tantalus butchered him as an infant and served him boiled to the gods as a test of their omniscience; the gods recognised the meal and refused it — except for Demeter, distracted by grief for Persephone, who ate the shoulder. The Fates restored Pelops whole, with an ivory shoulder crafted by Hephaestus to replace what Demeter had consumed. Grown, Pelops crossed to Elis and sought the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of King Oenomaus of Pisa, who had killed every previous suitor by chariot-race and nailed their heads to the palace. With Poseidon's gift of a team of winged horses — or in the rival version by bribing Oenomaus's charioteer Myrtilus to swap the bronze axle-pins for wax — Pelops won the race, killed Oenomaus in the crash, and married Hippodamia. His grave and sanctuary (the Pelopeion) lay at Olympia inside the sacred enclosure of Zeus, marking the aition of the Olympic Games.

Associated Places