Classical Mythology

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 him-

self 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 ever-
lasting 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 in-
volve 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