The Myth of Pelops and Hippodamia

At a Glance

• Central figures: Pelops, son of Tantalus and prince of Lydia; Hippodamia, daughter of King Oenomaus of Pisa; Oenomaus, the chariot king; and Myrtilus, the king’s charioteer who turned traitor.
• Setting: Pisa in the Peloponnese, and the racing ground where Oenomaus killed his daughter’s suitors one by one. The myth is a cornerstone of the Greek epic tradition, woven into the cursed genealogy of the House of Atreus.
• The turn: Pelops bribes Oenomaus’s charioteer Myrtilus to replace the bronze wheel-pins with wax, then kills Myrtilus rather than honor the bargain.
• The outcome: Oenomaus dies when his sabotaged chariot collapses mid-race; Pelops wins Hippodamia and the kingdom of Pisa - but Myrtilus, falling to his death, lays a curse on Pelops and all who come after him.
• The legacy: The curse on the house of Pelops runs forward into the next generation and the next, through Agamemnon and Menelaus, through the murders at Mycenae, through all the catastrophes the tragedians would later put onstage.

Before Pelops was old enough to compete in anything, his father Tantalus had already used him as a bargaining chip with the gods. Tantalus killed his son, cooked him, and served the meat at a divine feast - a test, he claimed, to see whether the Olympians could be deceived. They were not deceived. They recognized the dish for what it was, and in their revulsion they restored Pelops to life. Poseidon, who had taken notice of the boy before his death, took notice of him again afterward.

Pelops grew up favored, conscious of it, and intent on making use of it. When word reached him of Hippodamia - her beauty, her father’s obsession, the row of skulls that Oenomaus had nailed above his gates - Pelops did not flinch. He sailed west toward Pisa.

The Skulls Above the Gate

Oenomaus was not simply overprotective. He had received a prophecy that his own son-in-law would be the death of him, and he had decided, with the logic particular to men who fear prophecy, that the easiest solution was to ensure Hippodamia never married at all. He could not simply refuse suitors - that would be an insult to every household that sent one - so he invented a contest instead.

The terms were these: any man who wanted Hippodamia must race Oenomaus from Pisa to the altar of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth. The suitor took Hippodamia in his chariot and rode first; Oenomaus sacrificed a ram to Zeus and then gave chase. If Oenomaus caught the suitor before the finish, he had the right to kill him on the spot. If the suitor arrived first - Oenomaus would yield.

Oenomaus had never yielded. He drove horses given to him by Ares, faster than anything mortal, and he carried a spear that he was practiced at throwing from a moving chariot. By the time Pelops arrived, he had killed thirteen suitors and fixed their heads to the gateposts as a warning. Hippodamia stood inside the palace and waited. She had been waiting for years.

Myrtilus and the Wax Pins

Pelops surveyed the competition clearly. His own skill with horses was real, but it would not be enough. Poseidon might favor him, and he had indeed prayed at the sea’s edge for the god’s help - by some accounts Poseidon answered with a winged chariot and golden horses - but Pelops was not a man to rely on divine gifts alone. He went looking for another advantage.

He found it in Myrtilus. Oenomaus’s charioteer was the son of Hermes and by all accounts the finest horseman in Greece - yet he served a king who took the glory and left him in the shadows. Pelops came to him quietly and made his offer: help rig the chariot and, once Oenomaus was dead, Myrtilus would receive half the kingdom and a night with Hippodamia herself.

Myrtilus agreed. That night, while the chariot sat in the stable, he replaced the bronze lynch-pins holding the wheels with pins made of wax.

The Race

The morning of the contest arrived. Oenomaus performed his sacrifice at the altar of Zeus with the deliberateness of a man who had done this thirteen times before. Pelops lifted Hippodamia into the chariot beside him and drove north toward the Isthmus.

Behind them, after the ritual’s end, Oenomaus mounted his own chariot and released his horses. He had caught every man who had ever run from him. He settled into the familiar crouch, watching the gap close with the familiar pleasure.

The wax held for most of the race. Then, as the axle heated and the road roughened, it gave. Both wheels tore free from the axle at speed. The chariot pitched, the horses screamed and tangled in the traces, and Oenomaus was thrown. Whether the fall killed him outright or whether Pelops turned back and finished the job depends on which account you follow. Either way, the prophecy completed itself: Oenomaus died at the hands of the man who would become his son-in-law, exactly as he had spent years trying to prevent.

Pelops came through the gate at Pisa with Hippodamia alive beside him. He was king.

The Death of Myrtilus

Myrtilus came to collect what he was owed.

Pelops had no intention of paying. Sharing a kingdom is expensive; sharing a bride is unthinkable; and Myrtilus, alive and knowing what he knew, was a permanent risk. The man who had betrayed Oenomaus could betray anyone. Pelops weighed all of this, and the calculation was quick.

The three of them - Pelops, Hippodamia, Myrtilus - traveled together along the coast. At some point near the headland that would afterward carry his name, Pelops seized Myrtilus and threw him from the cliff into the sea below. Myrtilus, falling, had just enough time to speak. He cursed Pelops. He cursed his children. He cursed everything that would descend from the house Pelops was building.

The water took him. The sea off that headland was called the Myrtoan Sea, and is still called so.

The House That the Curse Built

Pelops ruled Pisa and extended his power across most of the southern peninsula that would take his name: the Peloponnese, the island of Pelops. He and Hippodamia had sons. Among them were Atreus and Thyestes.

The curse Myrtilus had spoken from the cliff’s edge moved quietly forward. Atreus and Thyestes fell into a hatred that ended with children served at a banquet table - an echo, deliberate and unbearable, of what Tantalus had done to Pelops himself. Atreus’s sons were Agamemnon and Menelaus. Agamemnon came home from Troy and was killed in his bath by his wife. His son Orestes killed his mother in return. The chain of blood ran on.

Pelops won his race. He won his kingdom and his bride. The wax pins had held just long enough, and Myrtilus had gone over the cliff precisely as planned. Everything worked. And the curse moved on from one generation to the next, working just as efficiently, settling into the house of Atreus like something that had always lived there.