The Children Of Pelops

IN gratitude to Hera for facilitating her marriage with Pelops, Hippodameia  summoned sixteen matrons, one from every city of Elis, help her institute the Heraean Games. Every fourth year, ever since the Sixteen Matrons, their successors, have woven a robe for Hera and celebrated the Games; which consist of a single race between virgins of different ages, the competitors being handicapped according to the years, with the youngest placed in front. They run clad in tunics of than knee length, their right breasts bared, their hair flying free. Chloris, Niobe’s only surviving daughter, was the first victrix in these games, the course of which has been fixed at five-sixths of the Olympic circle. The prize is an olive wreath, and a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera, a victrix may also dedicate a statue of herself in her own name.
b. The Sixteen Matrons once acted as peace-makers between Pisans and the Eleans. Now they also organize two groups of dancers; one in honour of Hippodameia, the other in honour of Physcoa, an Elean. Physcoa bore Narcaeus to Dionysus, a renowned warrior, founded the sanctuary of Athene Narcaea and was the first Elean worship Dionysus. Since some of the sixteen cities no longer exist, Sixteen Matrons are now supplied by the eight Elean tribes, a pair each. Like the arbiters, they purify themselves, before the Games begin, with the blood of a suitable pig and with water drawn from Pierian Spring which one passes on the road between Olympia Elis.
c. The following are said to have been children of Pelops and Hippodameia: Pittheus of Troezen; Atreus and Thyestes; Alcathous, not one killed by Oenomaus; the Argonaut Hippalcus, Hippalemus, Hippalcimus; Copreus the herald; Sciron the bandit; Epidaurus Argive, sometimes called the son of Apollo; Pleisthenes; Dias; Cybosurus; Corinthius; Hippasus; Cleon; Argeius; Aelinus; Astydameia, whom some call the mother of Amphitryon; Lysidice, whose daughter Hippothoë was carried off by Poseidon to the Echinadian Islands, and there bore Taphius; Eurydice, whom some call the mother of Alcmene; Nicippe; Antibia; and lastly Archippe, mother of Eurystheus and Alcyone.
d. The Megarians, in an attempt to obliterate the memory of how Minos captured their city, and to suggest that King Nisus was peaceably succeeded by his son-in-law Megareus, and he in turn by his son-in-law, Alcathous son of Pelops, say that Megareus had two sons, the elder of whom, Timalcus, was killed at Aphidnae during the invasion of Attica by the Dioscuri; and that, when the younger, Euippus, was killed by the lion of Cithaeron. Megareus promised his daughter Euachme, and his throne, to whoever avenged Euippus. Forthwith, Alcathous killed the lion and, becoming king of Megara, built a temple there to Apollo the Hunter and Artemis the Huntress. The truth is, however, that Alcathous came from Elis to Megara immediately after the death of Nisus and the sack of the city; that Megareus never reigned in Megara; and that Alcathous sacrificed to Apollo and Poseidon as ‘Previous Builders’, and then rebuilt the city wall on new foundations, the course of the old wall having been obliterated by the Cretans.

e. Alcathous was the father of Ischepolis; of Callipolis; of Iphinoë, who died a virgin, and at whose tomb, between the Council Hall and the shrine of Alcathous, Megarian brides pour libations-much as the Delian brides dedicate their hair to Hecaerge and Opis; also of Automedusa, who bore Iolaus to Iphicles; and of Periboea, who married Telamon, and whose son Ajax succeeded Alcathous as King of Megara. Alcathous’s elder son, Ischepolis, perished in the Calydonian Hunt; and Callipolis, the first Megarian to hear the sorrowful news, rushed up to the Acropolis, where Alcathous was offering burnt sacrifices to Apollo, and flung the faggots from the altar in token of mourning. Unaware of what had happened, Alcathous raged at his impiety and struck him dead with a faggory
f. Ischepolis and Euippus are buried in the Law Courts; Megareus on the right side of the ascent to the second Megarian Acropolis. Alcathous’s hero-shrine is now the public Record Office; and that of Timalcus, the Council Hall.
g. Chrysippus also passed as a son of Pelops and Hippodameia; but was, in fact, a bastard, whom Pelops had begotten on the nymph Astyoche, a Danaid. Now it happened that Laius, when banished from Thebes, was hospitably received by Pelops at Pisa, but fell in love with Chrysippus, to whom he taught the charioteer’s art; and, as soon as the sentence of banishment was annulled, carried the boy off in his chariot, from the Nemean Games, and brought him to Thebes as his catamite. Some say that Chrysippus killed himself for shame; others, that Hippodameia, to prevent Pelops from appointing Chrysippus his successor over the heads of her own sons, came to Thebes, where she tried to persuade Atreus and Thyestes to kill the boy by throwing him to the well. When both refused to murder their father’s guest, Hippodameia at dead of night, stole into Laius’s chamber and, finding him asleep pulled  down his sword from the wall and plunged it into his bedfellow’s belly. Laius was at once accused of the murder, but Chrysippus had visited Hippodameia as she fled, and accused her with his last breath.
h. Meanwhile, Pelops marched against Thebes to recover Chrysippus but, finding that Laius was already imprisoned by Atreus and Thyestes, nobly pardoned him, recognizing that only an affectionate love had prompted this breach of hospitality. Some say that Laius, and not Thamyris, or Minos, was the first pederast; which is why Thebans, far from condemning the practice, maintain a regiment, called the Sacred Band, composed entirely of boys and their lovers.
i. Hippodameia fled to Argolis, and there killed herself; but in accordance with an oracle, her bones were brought back to Olympia, where women enter her walled sanctuary once a year to offer sacrifices. At one of the turns of the Hippodrome stands Hippodameia bronze statue, holding a ribbon with which to decorate Pelops after his victory.

1. The Heraean Games took place on the day before the Olympic Games. They consisted of a girls’ foot race, originally for the office of High-priestess to Hera, and the victrix, who wore the olive as a symbol of peace and fertility, became one with the goddess  by partaking of her sacred cow. The Sixteen Matrons may once have taken turns to officiate as the High-priestess’s assistant during the sixteen seasons of the four-year Olympiad-each wheel of the royal chariot represented the solar year-and had four spokes, like a fire-wheel or swastika. ‘Narcaeus’ is clearly a back-formation from Athene Narcaea (‘benumbing’), a death-goddess. The matrons who organized the Heraean Games, which had once involved human sacrifice, propitiated the goddess with pig’s blood, and then washed themselves in running water. Hippodameia’s many children attest the strength of the confederation presided over by the Pelopid dynasty-all their names are associated with the Peloponnese or the Isthmus.
2. Alcathous’s murder of his son Callipolis at the altar of Apollo has probably been deduced from an icon which showed him offering his son as a burnt sacrifice to the ‘previous builder’, the city-god Melicertes, or Moloch, when he refounded Megara-as a king of Moab also did (Joshua). Moreover, like Samson and David, he had killed a lion in ritual combat. Corinthian mythology has many close affinities with Palestinian.
3. The myth of Chrysippus survives in degenerate form only. That he was a beautiful Pisan boy who drove a chariot, was carried off like Ganymedes, or Pelops himself (though not, indeed, to Olympus), and killed by Hippodameia, suggests that, originally, he was one of the royal surrogates who died in the chariot crash; but his myth has become confused with a justification of Theban pederasty, and with the legend of a dispute about the Nemean Games between Thebes and Pisa. Hippodameia, ‘horse-tamer’, was a title of the Moon-goddess, whose mare-headed statue at Phigalia held a Pelopid porpoise in her hand; four of Pelops’s sons and daughters bear horse-names.