Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Myrtilus.
The gallery
Oenomaus and Myrtilus
Unknown (ancient relief), Roman Imperial
This relief photograph preserves the chariot household of Pisa: King Oenomaus with his driver Myrtilus, son of Hermes — the charioteer whose sabotage (or betrayal) lets Pelops win Hippodamia. The image is a key visual witness to the figure whose curse, after Pelops hurled him into the sea, named the Myrtoan Sea and poisoned the Pelopid line.
Death of Myrtilus (Etruscan cinerary urn)
Unknown (Etruscan), 2nd century BC
An Etruscan cinerary urn stages Pelops casting Myrtilus from the chariot — the murder that turns the helpful (or treacherous) driver into a dying curse. Carved in the second century BC for a Volterran tomb, the relief shows how central the charioteer's fall was to Italic reception of the Olympian foundation myth.
Urn with the Killing of Myrtilus
Unknown (Etruscan), Hellenistic / Roman Republican
This urnetta from the Hypogeum of the Volumnii (Perugia) again freezes Myrtilus' death: Pelops' betrayal of the charioteer who had helped him win. Etruscan funerary art repeats the scene as an emblem of broken faith — Hermes' son as the murdered helper whose last words damn a dynasty.
In play
Myrtoan Sea
Greek geography named the sea south of Euboea after Myrtilus — the charioteer Pelops cast into the waves, a place-name that still remembers his fall.
Pelops
The Pelopid curse begins with Myrtilus' death — the charioteer's betrayal and murder that stains Atreus, Thyestes, and Agamemnon.