Apollodorus Epitome 2

1. As to the punishment of Tantalus, see Hom. Od. 11.582-592 , who describes only the torments of hunger and thirst, but says nothing about the overhanging stone. But the stone is often mentioned by later writers. See Archilochus, quoted by Plutarch, Praecept. Ger. Reipub. 6 , and by the Scholiast on Pind. O. 1.60(97) ; Pind. O. 1.55(87)ff. with the Scholia on 60(97); Pind. I. 8.10(21) ; Eur. Or. 4-10 ; Plat. Crat. 395d-e ; Hyp. Fr. 176, ed. Blass ; Antipater, in Anth. Pal., Appendix Planudea, iv.131.9ff. ; Plut. De superstitione 11 ; Lucian, Dial. Mort. 17 ; Paus. 10.31.10 ; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. iii.25 ; Apostolius, Cent. vii.60, xvi.9 ; Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum 73, p. 386 ; Athenaeus vii.14, p. 281 BC ; Lucretius iii.980ff. ; Cicero, De finibus i.18.60 ; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iv.16.35 ; Hor. Epod. 17, 65ff.and Sat. i.1.68ff. ; Ov. Met. 4.458ff. ; Hyginus, Fab. 82 . Ovid notices only the torments of hunger and thirst, and Lucian only the torment of thirst. According to another account, Tantalus lay buried under Mount Sipylus in Lydia, which had been his home in life, and on which his grave was shown down to late times ( Paus. 2.22.3 , 5.13.7 ). The story ran that Zeus owned a valuable watchdog, which guarded his sanctuary in Crete; but Pandareus, the Milesian, stole the animal and entrusted it for safekeeping to Tantalus. So Zeus sent Hermes to the resetter to reclaim his property, but Tantalus impudently denied on oath that the creature was in his house or that he knew anything about it. Accordingly, to punish the perjured knave, the indignant Zeus piled Mount Sipylus on the top of him. See the Scholiast on Pind. O. 1.60(97) ; Scholiast on Hom. Od. xix.518, xx.66 . In his lost play Tantalus Sophocles seems to have introduced the theft of the dog, the errand of Hermes to recover the animal, and perhaps the burial of the thief under the mountain. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 209ff.

2. This Broteas, mentioned by Apollodorus between Tantalus and Pelops, is probably the Broteas, son of Tantalus, who was said to have carved the ancient rock-hewn image of the Mother of the Gods which is still to be seen on the side of Mount Sipylus, about three hundred feet above the plain. See Paus. 3.22.4 , with Frazer, note on v.13.7 (vol. iii. pp. 553ff.) . Ovid mentions a certain Broteas, who from a desire of death burned himself on a pyre ( Ovid, Ibis 517ff. ), and who is probably to be identified with the Broteas of Apollodorus, though the Scholiasts on Ovid describe him either as a son of Jupiter (Zeus), or as a son of Vulcan (Hephaestus) and Pallas (Athena), identical with Erichthonius. According to one of the Scholiasts, Broteas, son of Zeus, was a very wicked man, who was blinded by Zeus, and loathing his life threw himself on a burning pyre. According to another of the Scholiasts, Broteas, son of Hephaestus and Athena, was despised for his ugliness, and this so preyed on his mind that he preferred death by fire. See Ovid, Ibis, ed. R. Ellis, p. 89 . It seems not improbable that this legend contains a reminiscence of a human sacrifice or suicide by fire, such as occurs not infrequently in the traditions of western Asia. See K. B. Stark, Niobe und die Niobiden (Leipsig, 1863), pp. 437ff. ; and for the Asiatic traditions of a human sacrifice or suicide by fire, see Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed., i.172ff.

3. The story was that at a banquet of the gods, to which he had been invited, Tantalus served up the mangled limbs of his young son Pelops, which he had boiled in a kettle. But the murdered child was restored to life by being put back into the kettle and then drawn out of it, with an ivory shoulder to replace the shoulder of flesh which Demeter or, according to others, Thetis had unwittingly eaten. See Pind. O. 1.24(37)ff. , with the Scholiast on Pind. O. 1.37 ; Lucian, De saltatione 54 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 152 ; Nonnus, in Westermann's Mythographi Graeci, Appendix Narrationum 57, p. 380 ; Serv. Verg. A. 6.603 , and on Verg. G. 3.7 ; Hyginus, Fab. 83 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 109, 186 (Second Vatican Mythographer 102; Third Vatican Mythographer vi.21) . The ivory shoulder of Pelops used afterwards to be exhibited at Elis ( Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii.34 ); but it was no longer to be seen in the time of Pausanias ( Paus. 1.13.6 ).

4. Compare Pind. O. 1.37(60)ff. , Pind. O. 1.71(114)ff. ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 . Pindar describes how Pelops went to the shore of the sea and prayed to Poseidon to give him a swift chariot, and how the god came forth and bestowed on him a golden chariot with winged steeds. On the chest of Cypselus at Olympia the horses of Pelops in the chariot race were represented with wings ( Paus. 5.17.7 ).

5. The following account of the wooing and winning of Hippodamia by Pelops is the fullest that has come down to us. Compare Pind. O. 1.67(109)ff. ; Diod. 4.73 ; Paus. 5.10.6ff. ; Paus. 5.14.6 ; Paus. 5.17.7 ; Paus. 6.20.17 ; Paus. 6.21.6-11 ; Paus. 8.14.10ff. ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.104 ; Scholiast on Pind. O. 1.71(114) ; Scholiast on Soph. El. 504 ; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 982, 990 ; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.752 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 ; Hyginus, Fab. 84 ; Serv. Verg. G. 3.7, ed. Lion ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 125 (First Vatican Mythographer 21; Second Vatican Mythographer 146) . The story was told by Pherecydes, as we learn from the Scholiasts on Sophocles and Apollonius Rhodius (ll.cc.). It was also the theme of two plays called Oenomaus, one of them by Sophocles, and the other by Euripides. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 233ff.,539ff. ; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 121ff. The versions of the story given by Tzetzes and the Scholiast on Eur. Or. 990 agree closely with each other and with that of Apollodorus, which they may have copied. They agree with him and with the Scholiast on Pindar in alleging an incestuous passion of Oenomaus for his daughter as the reason why he was reluctant to give her in marriage; indeed they affirm that this was the motive assigned for his conduct by the more accurate historians, though they also mention the oracle which warned him that he would perish at the hands of his in-law. The fear of this prediction being fulfilled is the motive generally alleged by the extant writers of antiquity. Diodorus Siculus mentions some particulars which are not noticed by other authors. According to him, the goal of the race was the altar of Poseidon at Corinth, and the suitor was allowed a start; for before mounting his chariot Oenomaus sacrificed a ram to Zeus, and while he was sacrificing the suitor drove off and made the best of his way along the road, until Oenomaus, having completed the sacrifice, was free to pursue and overtake him. The sacrifice was offered at a particular altar at Olympia, which some people called the altar of Hephaestus, and others the altar of Warlike Zeus ( Paus. 5.14.6 ). In the eastern gable of the temple of Zeus at Olympia the competitors with their chariots and charioteers were represented preparing for the race in the presence of an image of Zeus; among them were Hippodamia and her mother Sterope. These sculptures were found, more or less mutilated, by the Germans in their excavation of Olympia and are now exhibited in the local museum. See Paus. 5.10.6ff. with ( Frazer, commentary vol. iii. pp. 504ff. ) Curiously enough, the scene of the story is transposed by the Scholiast on Eur. Or. 990 , who affirms that Oenomaus reigned in Lesbos, though at the same time he says, in accordance with the usual tradition, that the goal of the race was the Isthmus of Corinth. The connexion of Oenomaus with Lesbos is to a certain extent countenanced by a story for which the authority cited is Theopompus. He related that when Pelops was on his way to Pisa ( Olympia) to woo Hippodamia, his charioteer Cillus died in Lesbos, and that his ghost appeared to Pelops in a dream, lamenting his sad fate and begging to be accorded funeral honours. So Pelops burned the dead man's body, buried his ashes under a barrow, and founded a sanctuary of Cillaean Apollo close by. See the Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.38 (where for ἐξερυπάρου τὸ εἴδωλον διὰ πυρός we should perhaps read ἐξεπύρου τὸ εἴδωλον διὰ πυρός, “he burned the body to ashes with fire,” εἴδωλον being apparently used in the sense of “dead body”). Strabo describes the tomb of Cillus or Cillas, as he calls him, as a great mound beside the sanctuary of Cillaean Apollo, but he places the grave and the sanctuary, not in Lesbos, but on the opposite mainland, in the territory of Adramyttium, though he says that there was a Cillaeum also in Lesbos. See Strab. 13.1.62-63 . Professor C. Robert holds that the original version of the legend of Oenomaus and Hippodamia belonged to Lesbos and not to Olympia. See his Bild und Lied, p. 187 note .

6. The number of the slain suitors was twelve according to Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 and the Scholiast on Eur. Or. 990 ; but it was thirteen according to Pindar and his Scholiasts. See Pind. O. 1.79(127)ff. , with the Scholia on 79(127) , where the names of the suitors are given. A still longer list of their names is given by Paus. 6.21.7 , who says that they were buried under a high mound of earth, and that Pelops afterwards sacrificed to them as to heroes every year.

7. According to Hyginus, Fab. 84 , when Pelops saw the heads of the unsuccessful suitors nailed over the door, he began to repent of his temerity, and offered Myrtilus, the charioteer of Oenomaus, the half of the kingdom if he would help him in the race.

8. According to another account, which had the support of Pherecydes, Myrtilus substituted linchpins of wax for linchpins of bronze. See Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.752 ; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 ; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 998 ; Serv. Verg. G. 3.7, ed. Lion , where for aereis we should read cereis (the text in Thilo and Hagen's edition of Servius is mutilated and omits the passage); Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 125 (First Vatican Mythographer 21; Second Vatican Mythographer 146) .

9. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.104 . The latter writer says, somewhat absurdly, that the incident took place when Pelops and Hippodamia were crossing the Aegean Sea, and that, Hippodamia being athirst, Pelops dismounted from the chariot to look for water in the desert.

10. Compare Eur. Or. 989ff.

11. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156 ; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 990 .

12. As to Apia, the old name of Peloponnese, see above, Apollod. 2.1.1 ; Paus. 2.5.7 ; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀπία . The term Pelasgiotis seems not to occur elsewhere as a name for Peloponnese. However, Euripides uses Pelasgia apparently as equivalent to Argolis ( Eur. Or. 960 ).

13. According to Pindar, Pelops had six sons by Hippodamia, and three different lists of their names are given by the Scholiasts on the passage. All the lists include the three mentioned by Apollodorus. See Pind. O. 1.89(144) , with the Scholia. Three sons, Hippalcimus, Atreus, and Thyestes, are named by Hyginus (Fab. 84) . Besides his legitimate sons Pelops is said to have had a bastard son Chrysippus, who was born to him before his marriage with Hippodamia. His fondness for this love-child excited the jealousy of his wife, and at her instigation Atreus and Thyestes murdered Chrysippus by throwing him down a well. For this crime Pelops cursed his two sons and banished them, and Hippodamia fled to Argolis, but her bones were afterwards brought back to Olympia. See Thuc. 1.9 ; Paus. 6.20.7 ; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.415ff. ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.105 ; Hyginus, Fab. 85 . Euripides wrote a tragedy Chrysippus on this subject. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 632ff. The tragedy is alluded to by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. iv.33.71 ). As to Chrysippus, see also above, Apollod. 3.5.5 .

14. This story of the golden lamb, and of the appeal made to its possession by the two brothers in the contest for the kingdom, is told in substantially the same way by Tzetzes, Chiliades i.425ff. ; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.106 ; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 811, 998 . Tzetzes records the vow of Atreus to sacrifice the best of his flock to Artemis, and he cites as his authority Apollonius, which is almost certainly a mistake for Apollodorus. Probably Tzetzes and the Scholiasts drew on the present passage of Apollodorus, or rather on the passage as it appeared in the unabridged text instead of in the Epitome which is all that we now possess of the last part of the Library. Euripides told the story allusively in much the same way. See Eur. El. 699ff. ; Eur. Or. 996ff. Compare Plat. Stat. 12 ; Paus. 2.18.1 ; Lucian, De astrologia 12 ; Dio Chrysostom lxvi. vol. ii. p. 221, ed. L. Dindorf ; Accius, quoted by Cicero, De natura deorum iii.27.68 ; Seneca, Thyestes 222-235 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.306 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 125ff. (First Vatican Mythographer 22; Second Vatican Mythographer 147) . From these various accounts and allusions it would seem that in their dispute for the kingdom, which Atreus claimed in right of birth as the elder ( Tzetzes, Chiliades i.426 ), it was agreed that he who could exhibit the greatest portent should be king. Atreus intended to produce the golden lamb, which had been born in his flocks; but meanwhile the lamb had been given by his treacherous wife Aerope to her paramour Thyestes, who produced it in evidence of his claim and was accordingly awarded the crown. However, with the assistance of Zeus, the rightful claimant Atreus was able to exhibit a still greater portent, which was the sun and the Pleiades retracing their course in the sky and setting in the east instead of in the west. This mighty marvel, attesting the divine approbation of Atreus, clinched the dispute in his favour; he became king, and banished his rival Thyestes. According to a different account, which found favour with the Latin poets, the sun reversed his course in the sky, not in order to demonstrate the right of Atreus to the crown, but on the contrary to mark his disgust and horror at the king for murdering his nephews and dishing up their mangled limbs to their father Thyestes at table. See Tzetzes, Chiliades i.451 ; Statyllius Flaccus, in Anth. Pal. ix.98.2 ; Hyginus, Fab. 88, 258 ; Ovid, Tristia ii.391ff. ; Ovid, Ars Am. i.327ff. ; Seneca, Thyestes 776ff. ; Martial iii.45.1ff. From the verses of Statyllius Flaccus we may infer that this latter was the interpretation put on the backward motion of the sun by Sophocles in his tragedy Atreus. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.93 . In later times rationalists explained the old fable by saying that Atreus was an astronomer who first calculated an eclipse, and so threw his less scientific brother into the shade ( Hyginus, Fab. 158 ; Serv. A. 1.568 ), or who first pointed out that the sun appears to revolve in a direction contrary to the motion of the stars. See Strab. 1.2.15 ; Lucian, De astrologia 12 . A fragment of Euripides appears to show that he put in the mouth of Atreus this claim to astronomical discovery. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), p. 639, frag. 861 . A still more grandiose explanation of the myth was given by Plato l.c., who adduced it, with grave irony, as evidence that in alternate cycles of vast duration the universe revolves in opposite directions, the reversal of its motion at the end of each cycle being accompanied by a great destruction of animal life. This magnificent theory was perhaps suggested to the philosopher by the speculations of Empedocles, and it bears a resemblance not only to the ancient Indian doctrine of successive epochs of creation and destruction, but also to Herbert Spencer's view of the great cosmic process as moving eternally in alternate and measureless cycles of evolution and dissolution. See Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. (London, 1875), i.7 , quoting the Laws of Manu; Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 3rd ed. (London, 1875), pp. 536ff. Compare Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii.303ff.

15. As to the famous, or infamous, Thyestean banquet, see Aesch. Ag. 1590ff. ; Paus. 2.18.1 ; Tzetzes, Chiliades i.447ff. ; Hyginus, Fab. 88 ; Seneca, Thyestes 682ff. ; Serv. Verg. A. 1.568 , xi.262 ; Lactantius Placidus on Statius, Theb. iv.306 ; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7, 126, 209 (First Vatican Mythographer 22; Second Vatican Mythographer 147; Third Vatican Mythographer viii.16) . Sophocles wrote at least two tragedies on the fatal feud between the brothers, one of them being called Atreus and the other Thyestes. The plots of the plays are not certainly known, but it is thought probable that in the former he dealt with the cannibal banquet, and in the latter with the subsequent adventures and crimes of Thyestes. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 91ff., 185ff. Euripides also wrote a tragedy called Thyestes. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 480ff. Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus as to the names of the three murdered sons of Thyestes, except that he calls one of them Callaus instead of Callileon. Only two, Tantalus and Plisthenes, are named by Seneca and Hyginus.

16. The later history of Thyestes, including his incest with his daughter Pelopia, is narrated much more fully by Hyginus, Fab. 87, 88 , who is believed to have derived the story from the Thyestes of Sophocles. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 185ff. The incest and the birth of Aegisthus, who is said to have received his name because he was suckled by a goat, are told more briefly by Lactantius Placidus (on Statius, Theb. iv.306) and the First and Second Vatican Mythographers ( Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 7ff., 126 ). The incest is said to have been committed at Sicyon, where the father and daughter met by night without recognizing each other; the recognition occurred at a later time by means of a sword which Pelopia had wrested from her ravisher, and with which, on coming to a knowledge of her relationship to him, she stabbed herself to death.

17. The passage translated in this paragraph does not occur in our present text of Apollodorus, which is here defective. It is found in Tzetzes, Chiliades i.456-465 , who probably borrowed it from Apollodorus; for in the preceding lines Tzetzes narrates the crimes of Atreus and Thyestes in agreement with Apollodorus and actually cites him as his authority, if, as seems nearly certain, we should read Apollodorus for Apollonius in his text (see above p. 164). The restoration of the passage to its present place in the text of Apollodorus is due to the German editor R. Wagner. Here after describing how Aegisthus had murdered Atreus and placed his own father Thyestes on the throne of Mycenae, Apollodorus tells us how the nurse of Atreus's two children, Agamemnon and Menelaus, saved the lives of her youthful charges by conveying them to Sicyon. The implied youthfulness of Agamemnon and Menelaus at the time of the death of their father Atreus is inconsistent with the narrative of Hyginus, Fab. 88 , who tells how Atreus had sent his two sons abroad to find and arrest Thyestes.

18. Polyphides is said to have been the twenty-fourth king of Sicyon and to have reigned at the time when Troy was taken. See Eusebius, Chronic. vol. i. coll. 175, 176, ed. A. Schoene .

19. As to Tantalus, the first husband of Clytaemnestra, and his murder by Agamemnon, see Eur. IA 1148ff. ; Paus. 2.18.2 , Paus. 2.22.2ff. According to Pausanias, he was a son of Thyestes or of Broteas, and his bones were deposited in a large bronze vessel at Argos.

20. In Hom. Il. 9.142ff. Agamemnon says that he has a son Orestes and three daughters, Chrysothemis, Laodice, and Iphianassa (Iphigenia), and he offers to give any one of his daughters in marriage to Achilles without a dowry, if only that doughty hero will forgive him and fight again for the Greeks against Troy. Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who figures so prominently in Greek tragedy, is unknown to Homer, and so is the sacrifice of Agamemnon's third daughter, Iphigenia.

21. See above, Apollod. 3.11.2 .