[370] Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59, Dindorf; Diodôr. iv. 74.
[372] Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic Eoiai.
[373] Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and Œnomaus was represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia: the horses of the former were given as having wings (Pausan. v. 17, 4). Pherekydês gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504).
[374] It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mules 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 themselves ascribed this phænomenon to a disability brought on the land by a curse from the lips of Œnomaus (Herod. iv. 30; Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 303).
[375] Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip. Orest. 985, with Schol., Plato, Kratyl. p. 395.
Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia: Pittheus, Trœzen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities so called, are said to have been among them: Atreus and Thyestês were also his sons, and his daughter Nikippê married Sthenelus of Mykênæ, and became the mother of Eurystheus.[376] We hear nothing of the principality of Pisa afterwards: the Pisatid villages became absorbed into the larger aggregate of Elis, after a vain struggle to maintain their separate right of presidency over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that Pelops left his name to the whole peninsula: according to Thucydidês, he was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had brought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The historian leaves out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends—preserving only this one circumstance, which, without being better attested than the rest, carries with it, from its commonplace and prosaic character, a pretended historical plausibility.[377]
[376] Apollod. ii. 4, 5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26, 3; v. 8, 1. Hesiod. ap. Schol. ad Iliad. xx. 116.
Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an illegitimate son named Chrysippus, of singular grace and beauty, towards whom he displayed so much affection as to rouse the jealousy of Hippodameia and her sons. Atreus and Thyestês conspired together to put Chrysippus to death, for which they were banished by Pelops and retired to Mykênæ,[378]—an event which brings us into the track of the Homeric legend. For Thucydidês, having found in the death of Chrysippus a suitable ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him at once to Mykênæ, and shows a train of plausible circumstances to account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king of Mykênæ, was the maternal nephew of Atreus: when he engaged in any foreign expedition, he naturally entrusted the regency to his uncle; the people of Mykênæ thus became accustomed to be governed by him, and he on his part made efforts to conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus was defeated and slain in Attica, the Mykênæan people, apprehensive of an invasion from the Hêrakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most powerful and most acceptable person for his successor.[379] Such was the tale which Thucydidês derived “from those who had learnt ancient Peloponnêsian matters most clearly from their forefathers.” The introduction of so much sober and quasi-political history, unfortunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poetical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it.