Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

CHAPTER
18
THE MYCENAEAN SAGA
The legends of Mycenae are particularly concerned with the House of Atreus
and the greatest of its princes, Agamemnon, leader of the Achaeans against Troy.
We consider the Trojan War later; in the present chapter we discuss the fortunes
of the house as they developed in Greece itself.
PELOPS AND TANTALUS
The ancestor of the family of Atreus was Pelops, son of Tantalus, who came from
Asia Minor as a suitor for the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaiis, king
of Pisa, whose territory included Olympia. This fact accounts for the importance
of Pelops in the religious cults at Olympia. From the end of the Mycenaean Age,
Pisa and Olympia were for most of the time controlled by Elis.
In the time of Tantalus and Pelops there was easy intercourse between gods
and mortals, and in some way Tantalus abused the privilege of eating with the
gods. In the best-known version of the myth, he invited the gods to dine with
him and cut up his son Pelops, boiled the parts in a cauldron, and served them
at the feast. Pindar is reluctant to believe the story, but he told it nevertheless
(Pindar, Olympian Ode 1. 46-58):
f
One of the envious neighbors secretly told the tale that they cut your limbs
up with a knife and [put them] into the water boiling over the fire, and at the
second course of the meat at the tables they divided you and ate. I cannot say
that any of the blessed gods was gluttonous—I stand aside. . . . But if the
guardians of Olympus honored a mortal man, that man was this Tantalus.
Yet he could not digest great fortune, and in his fullness he brought on himself
great madness. Thus the Father [Zeus] balanced above him a mighty rock,
and longing always to throw it away from his head, he is an exile from good
cheer.
The usual punishment of Tantalus is that he was condemned to suffer everlasting
thirst and hunger in the Underworld. We have given Homer's account
(Odyssey 11. 582-592) in Chapter 15. There are two other Greek myths that involve
cannibalism, both from places connected with Elis. The one is the story of
Lycaon, king of Arcadia, told by Ovid (Metamorphoses 1. 211-243, see pp. 93-94),
and the other is the banquet of Thyestes, which we discuss later in this chapter.
404