Hippodamia

Hippodamia (also Hippodamea and Hippodameia from Ἱπποδάμεια) is a mythological figure, the daughter of King Oenomaus and wife of Pelops with whom her offspring were Thyestes, Atreus, Pittheus, Alcathous, Troezen, Hippalcimus, Copreus, Astydameia, Nicippe, Eurydice, Lysidice and others.
== Courtship ==
Having grown to manhood, Pelops wanted to marry Hippodamia. King Oenomaus, her father, fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law, had killed thirteen or eighteen suitors of Hippodamia after defeating them in a chariot race and affixed their heads to the wooden columns of his palace. Pausanias was shown what was purported to be the last standing column in the late second century CE; the same author mentions that Pelops erected a monument in honor of all the suitors before himself, and enlists their names, which are as follows.Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6. 21. 9–11, with a reference to Megalai Ehoiai fr. 259(a).
#Marmax
#Alcathous, son of Porthaon
#Euryalus
#Eurymachus
#Crotalus
#Acrias of Lacedaemon, founder of Acriae
#Capetus
#Lycurgus
#Lasius
#Chalcodon
#Tricolonus (descendant of another Tricolonus, who was a son of Lycaon)
#Aristomachus
#Prias
#Pelagon
#Aeolius
#Cronius
#Erythras, son of Leucon
#Eioneus, son of Magnes
Pelops came to ask for Hippodamia's hand and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, Pelops went to the seaside and invoked Poseidon, his former lover.Pindar, First Olympian Ode. 71. Reminding Poseidon of their love ("Aphrodite's sweet gifts"), he asked Poseidon for help. Smiling, Poseidon caused a chariot drawn by winged horses to appear.Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 2.27.67 (noted in Kerenyi 1959:64). In an episode that was added to the simple heroic chariot race, Pelops, still unsure of himself (or alternatively, Hippodamia herself), convinced Oenomaus' charioteer, Myrtilus, a son of Hermes, to help him win. Myrtilus was convinced by Pelops or Hippodamia promising him half of Oenomaus' kingdom and the first night in bed with Hippodamia. The night before the race, while Myrtilus was putting Oenomaus' chariot together, he replaced the bronze linchpins attaching the wheels to the chariot axle with fake ones made of beeswax. The race began, and went on for a long time. But just as Oenomaus was catching up to Pelops and readying to kill him, the wheels flew off and the chariot broke apart. Myrtilus survived, but Oenomaus was dragged to death by his horses. Pelops then killed Myrtilus (by throwing him off a cliff into the sea) after the latter attempted to rape Hippodamia.
As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops. This was the source of the curse that haunted future generation of Hippodamia's and Pelops' children, including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus and Orestes.
== Artistic and anthropological perspectives ==
Walter Burkert notes that though the story of the contest for Hippodamia's hand figures in the Hesiodic Megalai Ehoiai and on the chest of Cypselus (ca. 570 BCE) that was conserved at Olympia, and though preparations for the chariot-race figured in the east pediment of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia, the myth of the chariot race only became important at Olympia with the introduction of chariot racing in the twenty-fifth Olympiad (680 BCE).Burkert, Homo Necans 1983, p 95f.; Megalai Ehoiai fr. 259. Georges Devereux connected the "courtship" of Hippodamia with animal husbandry taboos of Elis,G. Devereux, "The abduction of Hippodameia as 'Aition' of a Greek animal husbandry rite" ''SMSR 36 (1965), pp 3-25. Burkert, in following Devereux's thesis, attests Herodotus iv.30, Plutarch's Greek Questions 303b and Pausanias 5.5.2. and the influence of Elis at Olympia that grew in the seventh century.
==References==
Category:Greek Mythology