Page:Lovers Legends - The Gay Greek Myths.pdf/26



hen mortals first began to walk the earth, a great host descended upon the foothills of Sipylus, the holy mountain. At the command of Tantalus, their king, they raised a city there, the first ever built by man, and flung up massive walls around it, hewn to endure to the end of time. The Holder of the Earth had given Tantalus his own daughter, Dione, for wife, and she had already borne him two outstanding children. Pelops alone – their third child, a boy in the first bloom of youth—was unremarkable. The king and queen, however, only had eyes for him, and groomed him to follow his father on the throne.

The gods loved Tantalus intensely. Zeus himself counted the king among his closest friends. He opened wide the doors of Olympus to him, and often invited him to share the honor of the gods' table as no mortal before or since. Nor did Tantalus hold back: he filled his belly with nectar and ambrosia and won deathlessness for himself. The Olympians, who trusted the man completely, counseled with him over the workings of the world, and confided in 12