Restored after being cut apart at the gods' feast, Pelops won Hippodamia through a sabotaged chariot race and gave his name to the Peloponnese.1
Apollodorus says Pelops was slaughtered and boiled at a banquet of the gods, then returned to life more beautiful than before. Poseidon loved him and gave him a winged chariot whose axles remained dry even across the sea.2
Hyginus makes Tantalus the killer and says Ceres consumed part of the boy before the gods restored him, replacing the missing shoulder with ivory.3
Ovid preserves the ivory shoulder as the visible mark Pelops bears while mourning the death of his sister Niobe.4
To win Hippodamia, Pelops entered Oenomaus' lethal chariot contest. Myrtilus sabotaged the king's wheels, Oenomaus died, and Pelops later cast the charioteer into the sea.5
Pausanias saw Pelops as the preeminent local hero of Olympia: his precinct stood beside Zeus' sanctuary, annual sacrifices were made at his tomb, and one of his shoulder bones was remembered as a relic with power over the fortunes of Troy and Elis.6
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
