Epitome

Accordingly Myrtilus, being in love with her and wishing to gratify her, did not insert the linchpins in the boxes of the wheels,[*](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).) and thus caused Oenomaus to lose the race and to be entangled in the reins and dragged to death; but according to some, he was killed by Pelops. And

Pelops, therefore, got Hippodamia; and on his journey, in which he was accompanied by Myrtilus, he came to a certain place, and withdrew a little to fetch water for his wife, who was athirst; and in the meantime Myrtilus tried to rape her.[*](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.) But when Pelops learned that from her, he threw Myrtilus into the sea, called after him the Myrtoan Sea, at Cape Geraestus[*](Compare Eur. Or. 989ff. ); and Myrtilus, as he was being thrown, uttered curses against the house of Pelops.

When Pelops had reached the Ocean and been cleansed by Hephaestus,[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 156; Scholiast on Eur. Or. 990.) he returned to Pisa in Elis and succeeded to the kingdom of Oenomaus, but not till he had subjugated what was formerly called Apia and Pelasgiotis, which he called Peloponnesus after himself.[*](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).)

The sons of Pelops were Pittheus, Atreus, Thyestes, and others.[*](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.) Now the wife of Atreus was Aerope,

and having choked the lamb, he deposited it in a box and kept it there, and Aerope gave it to Thyestes, by whom she had been debauched. For the Mycenaeans had received an oracle which bade them choose a Pelopid for their king, and they had sent for Atreus and Thyestes. And when a discussion took place concerning the kingdom, Thyestes declared to the multitude that the kingdom ought to belong to him who owned the golden lamb, and when Atreus agreed, Thyestes produced the lamb and was made king.

But Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus and told him to stipulate with Thyestes that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backward; and when Thyestes agreed, the sun set in the east; hence the deity having plainly attested the usurpation of Thyestes, Atreus got the kingdom and banished Thyestes.[*](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. )

But afterwards being apprized

But seeking by all means to pay Atreus

1. But[*](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.) the nurse took Agamemnon and Menelaus
2. 171
   to Polyphides, lord of Sicyon,[*](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.)
3. who again sent them to Oeneus, the Aetolian.
4. Not long afterwards Tyndareus brought them back again,
5. and they drove away Thyestes to dwell in Cytheria,
6. after that they had taken an oath of him at the altar of Hera, to which he had fled.
7. And they became the sons-in-law of Tyndareus by marrying his daughters,
8. Agamemnon getting Clytaemnestra to wife,
9. after he had slain her spouse Tantalus, the son of Thyestes,
10. together with his newborn babe, while Menelaus got Helen.

And Agamemnon reigned over the Mycenaeans and married Clytaemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, after slaying her former husband Tantalus, son of Thyestes, with his child.[*](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.) And there were born to Agamemnon a son Orestes, and daughters, Chrysothemis, Electra, and Iphigenia.[*](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.) And Menelaus married Helen and reigned over Sparta, Tyndareus having ceded the kingdom to him.[*](See above, Apollod. 3.11.2.)

But afterwards Alexander carried off Helen, as some say, because such was the will of Zeus, in order that his daughter might be famous for having embroiled Europe and Asia; or, as others have said, that the race of the demigods might be exalted.

For

For nine days he was entertained by Menelaus; but on the tenth day, Menelaus having gone on a journey to Crete to perform the obsequies of his mother's father Catreus, Alexander persuaded Helen to go off[*](The Greek for “to go off” is ἀπαγαγεῖν, a rare use of ἀπάγειν, which, however, occurs in the common phrase, ἄπαγε,“Be off with you!”) with him. And she

But Hera sent them a heavy storm which forced them to put in at Sidon. And fearing lest he should be pursued, Alexander spent much time in Phoenicia and Cyprus.[*](The voyage of Paris and Helen to Sidon was known to Hom. Il. 6.289ff., with the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 6.291. It was also recorded in the epic Cypria, according to Proclus, who says that Paris captured the city (Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 18). Yet according to Hdt. 2.117, the author of the Cypria described how Paris and Helen sailed in three days from Sparta to Ilium with a fair wind and a smooth sea. It seems therefore that Herodotus and Proclus had different texts of the Cypria before them. Dictys Cretensis tells how, driven by the winds to Cyprus, Paris sailed with some ships to Sidon, where he was hospitably entertained by the king, but basely requited his hospitality by treacherously murdering his host and plundering the palace. In embarking with his booty on his ships, he was attacked by the Sidonians, but, after a bloody fight and the loss of two ships, he succeeded in beating off his assailants and putting to sea with the rest of his vessels. See Dictys Cretensis i.5.) But when he thought that all chance of pursuit was over, he came to Troy with Helen.

But some say that Hermes, in obedience to the will of Zeus, stole Helen and carried her to Egypt, and gave her to Proteus, king of the Egyptians, to guard, and that Alexander repaired to Troy with a phantom of Helen fashioned out of clouds.[*](Compare Eur. Hel. 31-51; Eur. Hel. 582ff.; Eur. Hel. 669ff.; Eur. El. 1280ff. In the Helen the dramatist says that Hera, angry with Paris for preferring Aphrodite to her, fashioned a phantom Helen which he wedded, while the real Helen was transported by Hermes to Egypt and committed to the care of Proteus. In the Electra the poet says that it was Zeus who sent a phantom Helen to Troy, in order to stir up strife and provoke bloodshed among men. A different account is given by Hdt. 2.112-120. According to him, Paris carried the real Helen to Egypt, but there king Proteus, indignant at the crime of which Paris had been guilty, banished him from Egypt and detained Helen in safekeeping until her true husband, Menelaus, came and fetched her away. Compare Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. iv.16; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 147ff. Later writers accepted this view, adding that instead of the real Helen, whom he kept, Proteus conjured up by magic art a phantom Helen, which he gave to Paris to carry away with him to Troy. See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 113; Serv. Verg. A. 1.651 and ii.592. So far as we know, the poet Stesichorus in the sixth century before our era was the first to broach the theory that Helen at Troy, for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought and died, was a mere wraith, while her true self was far away, whether at home in Sparta or with Proteus in Egypt; for there is nothing to show whether Stesichorus shared the opinion that Paris had spirited her away to the East before he returned, with or without her, to Troy. This view the poet propounded by way of an apology to Helen for the evil he had spoken of her in a former poem; for having lost the sight of his eyes he ascribed the loss to the vengeance of the heroine, and sought to propitiate her by formally retracting all the scandals he had bruited about concerning her. See Plat. Phaedrus 243a-b; Plat. Rep. 9.586c; Isoc. 10.64; Paus. 3.19.13; Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ed. Th. Bergk, iii.980ff. )