| Oenomaus | |
|---|---|
 King Oenomaus, Hippodamia, and Olympian gods. Illustration from an ancient vase. | |
| Sterope | |
| Issue | Hippodamia, Leucippus, Alcippe |
| Father | Ares |
| Mother | Harpina |
In Greek mythology, King Oenomaus (also Oenamaus; Greek : Οἰνόμαος, Oἱnómaos) of Pisa, [1] was the father of Hippodamia and the son of Ares. His name Oinomaos denotes a wine man.
Oenomaeus' mother was either naiad Harpina (daughter of the river god Phliasian Asopus, the armed (harpe) [2] spirit of a spring near Pisa) [3] or Sterope, one of the Pleiades, [4] whom some identify as his consort instead. [5]
He married, if not Sterope, then Evarete of Argos, the daughter of Acrisius and Eurydice. Yet others give Eurythoe, daughter of Danaus, either as his mother [6] or consort. [7] His children besides Hippodamia were Leucippus (who perished because of his love for Daphne) and Alcippe (mother of Marpessa by Evenus). Pausanias, who is generally skeptical about stories of humans descending from gods, makes Oenomaus son of a mortal father, Alxion. [8] John Tzetzes adduces a version which, in the same vein, calls Oenomaus son of a Hyperochus by Sterope. [9] The genealogy offered in the earliest literary reference, Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris , would place him two generations before the Trojan War, making him the great-grandfather of the Atreides, Agamemnon and Menelaus.
| Relation | Names | Sources | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euripides | Scholia on Apollonius | Diodorus | Parthenius | Apollodorus | Plutarch | Dio Chrysostom | Hyginus | Pausanias | Philostratus | Eusebius | Tzetzes | ||
| Parentage | Ares and Eurythoe | ✓ | |||||||||||
| Ares and Harpina | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||
| Ares and (A)Sterope | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Ares and Asterie | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Alxion | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Aethlius | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Hyperochus and Sterope | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Spouse | Sterope | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Evarete | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Eurythoe | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Children | Hippodamia | ✓ (not named) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
| Leucippus | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||
| Alcippe | ✓ | ||||||||||||
King Oenomaus, fearful of a prophecy that claimed he would be killed by his son-in-law, had killed eighteen suitors of his daughter Hippodamia after defeating them in a chariot race. He affixed their heads to the wooden columns of his palace. [10] Pausanias was shown what was purportedly the last standing column in the late 2nd century AD; he mentions that Pelops erected a monument in honor of all the suitors who preceded him, and lists their names: [11]
Pelops son of King Tantalus of Lydia, came to ask for her hand and prepared to race Oenomaus. Worried about losing, Pelops went to the seaside and invoked Poseidon, his former lover. [12] 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. [13] Pelops and Hippodamia, very much in love, devised a plan to replace 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. Oenomaus' charioteer, Myrtilus, survived, but Oenomaus was dragged to death by his horses.
Pelops then killed Myrtilus (by throwing him off a cliff into the sea as he cursed him) after the latter attempted to claim Hippodamia. As Myrtilus died, he cursed Pelops. This was the source of the curse that haunted descendants of Pelops', including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus and Orestes. Also, the burial place of Myrtilus was a taraxippus in Olympia, a "horse-frightening place" during races.
In memory of Oenomaus, the Olympic Games were created (or alternatively the Olympic Games were in celebration of Pelops' victory). Oenomaus' chariot race was one legendary origin of the Olympic Games; one of its turning-posts was preserved, and round it grew an Elean legend of a burnt "house of Oenomaus", reported by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. [14]
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In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was the son, or grandson, of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra and the father of Iphigenia, Electra, Laodike (Λαοδίκη), Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. Agamemnon was killed upon his return from Troy, either by his wife's lover Aegisthus or by his wife herself.
Poseidon was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes. He also had the cult title "earth shaker". In the myths of isolated Arcadia he is related with Demeter and Persephone and he was venerated as a horse, however it seems that he was originally a god of the waters. He is often regarded as the tamer or father of horses, and with a strike of his trident, he created springs which are related to the word horse. His Roman equivalent is Neptune.
Tantalus was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. He was also called Atys.
In Greek mythology, Menelaus was a king of Mycenaean (pre-Dorian) Sparta. According to the Iliad, Menelaus was a central figure in the Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Prominent in both the Iliad and Odyssey, Menelaus was also popular in Greek vase painting and Greek tragedy, the latter more as a hero of the Trojan War than as a member of the doomed House of Atreus.
In Greek mythology, Atreus was a king of Mycenae in the Peloponnese, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Collectively, his descendants are known as Atreidai or Atreidae.
In Greek mythology, Aerope was a Cretan princess as the daughter of Catreus, king of Crete. She was the sister to Clymene, Apemosyne and Althaemenes. Aerope's father Catreus gave her to Nauplius, to be drowned, or sold abroad, but Nauplius spared her, and she became the wife of Atreus, or Pleisthenes, and by most accounts the mother of Agamemnon and Menelaus. While the wife of Atreus, she became the lover of his brother Thyestes, and gave Thyestes the golden lamb, by which he became the king of Mycenae.
In Greek mythology, Thyestes was a king of Olympia. Thyestes and his brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olympia. They took refuge in Mycenae, where they ascended the throne upon the absence of King Eurystheus, who was fighting the Heracleidae. Eurystheus had meant for their lordship to be temporary; it became permanent because of his death in conflict.
In Greek mythology, Pleisthenes or Plisthenes, is the name of several members of the house of Tantalus, the most important being a son of Atreus, said to be the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Although these two brothers are usually considered to be the sons of Atreus himself, according to some accounts, Pleisthenes was their father, but he died, and Agamemnon and Menelaus were adopted by their grandfather Atreus.
In Greek mythology, Pelops was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus region. His father, Tantalus, was the founder of the House of Atreus through Pelops's son of that name.
Hippodamia was a Greek mythological figure. She was the queen of Pisa as the wife of Pelops.
In Greek mythology, Myrtilus was a divine hero and son of Hermes. His mother is said variously to be the Amazon Myrto; Phaethusa, daughter of Danaus; or a nymph or mortal woman named Clytie, Clymene or Cleobule (Theobule). Myrtilus was the charioteer of King Oenomaus of Pisa in Elis, on the northwest coast of the Peloponnesus.
In Greek mythology, Chrysippus was a divine hero of Elis in the Peloponnesus (Greece), sometimes referred to as Chrysippus of Pisa.
692 Hippodamia, provisional designation 1901 HD, is a stony asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, about 45 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 5 November 1901, by the German astronomers Max Wolf and August Kopff at Heidelberg Observatory in southern Germany. Nine years later, the body was rediscovered by August Kopff at its apparition in 1910.
In Greek mythology, the Taraxippus was a presence, variously identified as a ghost or dangerous site, blamed for frightening horses at hippodromes throughout Greece. Some taraxippoi were associated with the Greek hero cults or with Poseidon in his aspect as a god of horses who brought about the death of Hippolytus. Pausanias, the ancient source offering the greatest number of explanations, regards it as an epithet rather than a single entity.
In Greek mythology, the Danaïdes, also Danaides or Danaids, were the fifty daughters of Danaus. In the Metamorphoses, Ovid refers to them as the Belides after their grandfather Belus. They were to marry the 50 sons of Danaus' twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. In the most common version of the myth, all but one of them killed their husbands on their wedding night, and are condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device. In the classical tradition, they came to represent the futility of a repetitive task that can never be completed.
The Greek lyric poet Pindar composed odes to celebrate victories at all four Panhellenic Games. Of his fourteen Olympian Odes, glorifying victors at the Ancient Olympic Games, the First was positioned at the beginning of the collection by Aristophanes of Byzantium since it included praise for the games as well as of Pelops, who first competed at Elis. It was the most quoted in antiquity and was hailed as the "best of all the odes" by Lucian. Pindar composed the epinikion in honour of his then patron Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse, whose horse Pherenikos and its jockey were victorious in the single horse race in 476 BC.
Pleisthenes, in Greek mythology, was the son of Atreus and Aerope. According to Hesiod, Pleisthenes married Cleolla, daughter of Dias, and became the father of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Anaxibia. Aeschylus also followed this tradition when he called the Atreidai "the race of Pleisthenes".
The Eastern pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia depicts the tale of Pelops just before the chariot race wherein he kills the king Oenomaus in order to win the hand of his daughter Hippodamia. The depiction of this chariot race on the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, along with that of the Twelve Labours of Heracles on the metopes of the frieze, relate to the location of the temple in Olympia; the chariot race and Heracles were both believed to have started the tradition of the Olympic Games.
In Greek mythology, Pelopia, Pelopea or Pelopeia, less commonly known as Mnesiphae, was the daughter of Thyestes.
In Greek mythology, Evenus a river-god of Aetolia as the son either of Oceanus and Tethys.
