Mythic Figure

Pelops

Πέλοψ

mythepictragedy

Winner of a bride by a rigged chariot race — and of a charioteer’s curse on all his line.

Restored from his father’s cauldron, Pelops won Hippodamia by bribing her father’s charioteer Myrtilus to sabotage the king’s car — then hurled his accomplice into the sea rather than pay. Myrtilus cursed the line as he fell. The peninsula of southern Greece bears his name — the Peloponnese, “Pelops’ isle” — and his scepter, Homer says, passed down to Agamemnon himself.

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