Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/191

 I'ELOPS AND (ENOMAUS. 159 immediately bordering on the district of Olympia. QEnomaus, having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in marriage except to some suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth ;i the ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnesus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life ; and the fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined with the skill of the charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen unsuccessful competitors to perish by the lance of GEnomaus. 2 Pelops enter- ed the lists as a suitor : his prayers moved the god Poseidon to supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses ; or accord- ing to another story, he captivated the affections of Hippoda- meia herself, who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen the wheels of CEnomaus before he started, so that the latter was overturned and perished in the race. Having thus won the hand of Hippodameia, Pelops became Prince of Pisa. 3 He put to death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from indignation at his treachery to CEnomaus, 4 or from jealousy on the score of Hip- podameia : but Myrtilus was the son of Hermes, and though Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that god, he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were destined painfully to work out. 5 Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia: Pittheus, Troezen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities 1 Diodor. iv. 74. 2 Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic Eoiai. 3 Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and CEnomaus was represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia : the horses of the former were given as having wings (Pausan, v. 17, 4). Pherekydes gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504). 4 It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mnlea were ever bred in the Eleian territory : an Eleian who wished to breed a mule sent his mare for the time out of the region. The Eleians themselTca ascribed this phenomenon to a disability brought on the land by a carso from the lips of CEnomaus 'Herod, iv. 30; Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. p. 303). 5 Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip. Orest. 985, with Schol.. Plato, Kratyl. p 395