Speaker 1: Wearied at last made the impious race of thirsty Tantalus
Speaker 1: give over its lust for savagery. Enough sin has been wrought,
Speaker 1: nothing has a veiled or general wrong. Himself betrayed, fell Merdalus,
Speaker 1: betrayer of his lord, and dragged down by the faith
Speaker 1: which he had shown. He made a sea famous by
Speaker 1: its change of name to Ionean ships. No tail is
Speaker 1: better known. While the little son ran to his father's kiss,
Speaker 1: welcomed by sinful sword, he fell an untimely victim at
Speaker 1: the hearth, and by the right hand was carved o Tantalus,
Speaker 1: that you might spread a banquet for the gods your guests.
Speaker 1: Such food eternal hunger, such eternal thirst pursues, nor for
Speaker 1: such bestioviennes could have been meaded penalty more fit. Weary,
Speaker 1: with empty throat, stands Tantalus above his guilty head, hangs
Speaker 1: food in plenty than Phineas's birds, more elusive on either
Speaker 1: side with laden boughs. A tree leans over him, and,
Speaker 1: bending and trembling neath its weight of fruit, makes sport
Speaker 1: with his wide, straining jaws the prize. Though he is
Speaker 1: eager and impatient of delay. Deceived so oft, he tries
Speaker 1: no more to touch, turns away, his eyes, shuts tight
Speaker 1: his lips, and behind clenched teeth, he bears his hunger.
Speaker 1: But then the whole grove lets its riches down nearer still,
Speaker 1: and the mellow fruits above his head mock him with
Speaker 1: drooping boughs and wet again the hunger, which bids him
Speaker 1: ply his hands in vain. When he has stretched these
Speaker 1: fourth and gladly has been baffled, the whole ripe harvest
Speaker 1: of the bending woods is snatched far out of reach.
Speaker 1: Then comes a raging thirst, harder to bear than hunger.
Speaker 1: When by this his blood has grown hot and glowed
Speaker 1: as with fiery torches, the poor wretch stands catching at
Speaker 1: waves that seem to approach his lips. But these the
Speaker 1: elusive water, turns aside, failing in meager shallows, and leaves
Speaker 1: him utterly striving to pursue. Then deep from the whirling
Speaker 1: stream he drinks but dust. Hi, and welcome to my
Speaker 1: absolute favorite time of year. This is Let's talk about
Speaker 1: myths baby, and I am your host, live here to
Speaker 1: bring you our sixth year of Spooky Season, the only
Speaker 1: themed month themed anything that has been running in this
Speaker 1: podcast since the very first year. Because it's the best season,
Speaker 1: what can I say? This month, as always, I am
Speaker 1: bringing you a collection of the spookiest glorioust stories from
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek and Roman world. Of course, as much
Speaker 1: as I would love it to be all spooky and
Speaker 1: its spookiestness, we do often rely on horror and gore
Speaker 1: when it comes to myth but that certainly works too,
Speaker 1: and it's particularly true this year. This year's spooky season
Speaker 1: is many things because I decided to just go all out,
Speaker 1: just just for funzies. Today I am bringing you a
Speaker 1: deep dive into my personal favorite cursed family, those who
Speaker 1: love a bit of cannibalism alongside their infanticide as one
Speaker 1: does this time of year, or you know, just generally
Speaker 1: in these iconic mythological families of Greece. That's right, we
Speaker 1: are returning to the curse with so many levels that
Speaker 1: it goes by many many names, but like today's episode,
Speaker 1: it begins as the Curse of the Tantalids. And next
Speaker 1: week we're returning to my new favorite Roman writer, none
Speaker 1: other than Seneca, the man who brought us the absolutely
Speaker 1: iconic version of Medea that we looked at in August.
Speaker 1: Because well, when I learned that he had a play
Speaker 1: called the Thiistes. I knew there was absolutely nothing else
Speaker 1: to be done for Spooky season. I simply had to
Speaker 1: cover it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, because Thiestes
Speaker 1: also happens to be part of this oh so cursed family.
Speaker 1: So we must begin with his ancestors, the Tantalids. This
Speaker 1: is a multi generational cannibalistic family, and like is there
Speaker 1: is there a word for that specific act of cannibalizing
Speaker 1: one's relatives and or children, because this family needs a
Speaker 1: word for that. This is episode two thirty one, Murder
Speaker 1: after murder, generation after generation, the Curse of the Tantalids
Speaker 1: and the Pelipidie. Tantalus is punished in hades by having
Speaker 1: a stone impending over him, by being perpetually in a
Speaker 1: lake and seeing at his shoulders on either side trees
Speaker 1: with fruit growing beside the lake. The water touches his jaws,
Speaker 1: but when he would take a draft of it, the
Speaker 1: water dries up, and when he would partake of the fruits,
Speaker 1: the trees with the fruits are lifted by winds as
Speaker 1: high as the clouds. Some say that he is thus
Speaker 1: punished because he blabbed to men the mysteries of the gods,
Speaker 1: and because he attempted to share Ambarrosia with his fellows.
Speaker 1: It starts with a child of Zeus, because of course,
Speaker 1: the most cursed family line in all of Greek mythology
Speaker 1: starts with a child of Zeus. It starts with a
Speaker 1: child of Zeus and his hubris. Again, I wonder where
Speaker 1: he got it from. The passage I read at the
Speaker 1: very top of the episode was from none other than
Speaker 1: Seneca and his Thyestes, because I just couldn't wait until
Speaker 1: next week when we get into that place properly. And
Speaker 1: the quote I read just now was from Pseudo Apollodorus
Speaker 1: to give us just a taste of what is to
Speaker 1: come in Tantalus's Troubling Tale, rhyming is spooky, right. Tantalus
Speaker 1: was the son of Zeus and the progenitor of this
Speaker 1: mind bendingly cursed family line. Tantalus is from the east
Speaker 1: in Phrygia, and all of this takes place on a
Speaker 1: mountain called Sipolis. But frankly, there's too much curse to
Speaker 1: cover for us to worry too hard about the locale.
Speaker 1: It's what he did that I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: That's where we'll find all the blood and gore. But
Speaker 1: what he actually did to anger the gods and find
Speaker 1: himself the recipient of one of the most famous eternal
Speaker 1: punishments isn't quite as clear. In fact, the same goes
Speaker 1: for the punishment itself. Though that Tantalus was indeed being
Speaker 1: eternally punished in the depths of Tartarus is perpetually true.
Speaker 1: There are actually a few brief versions of what exactly
Speaker 1: Tantalus did, and another two versions of what exactly his
Speaker 1: punishment looked like, all of which, of course revolve around
Speaker 1: unrelenting hubris. He doesn't stray that far beyond the bounds
Speaker 1: of what is officially not okay in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the gods. Honestly, this surprised even me, which is frankly
Speaker 1: why I love revisiting stories that I've only told in
Speaker 1: those earliest days of the podcast. Tantalus is so famous
Speaker 1: for one version of his story, one version of his punishment.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that, as we should all assume
Speaker 1: at this point, it is not quite so simple. We'll
Speaker 1: start with the lesser known options, the one I didn't
Speaker 1: tell you in those earlier, less detailed episodes. Of this
Speaker 1: cursed family. This is the PG version of Tantalus's story.
Speaker 1: It is the child friendly, quite literally the kinder story
Speaker 1: of Tantalus's crimes and his punishment. It says that this
Speaker 1: son of Zeus was spending his time amongst the Olympians,
Speaker 1: one of the few to ever have that luxury. For
Speaker 1: reasons that will become clear. He was socializing with the
Speaker 1: gods as if he was almost one of them, and
Speaker 1: Zeus particularly got so comfortable with having Tantalus there, with
Speaker 1: treating him as someone even close to an equal, that
Speaker 1: on a whim one day he decided he wanted to
Speaker 1: grant Tantalus a favor. So he told his son that
Speaker 1: he could have whatever he wanted. And what Tantalus wanted
Speaker 1: was well, an even more distinct level of equality than
Speaker 1: the one that he'd had a taste of. He asked
Speaker 1: Zeus that he'd be granted a life the same as
Speaker 1: the gods. Zeus was horrified, what a request, but he'd
Speaker 1: made a promise and he had to keep it. And
Speaker 1: if you think this experience acts as a deterrent to
Speaker 1: Zeus that he won't offer a similar favorite to a
Speaker 1: mortal in the future, well you would be giving Zeus
Speaker 1: far too much credit, but he was in it now.
Speaker 1: He granted this to Tantalus, but it came at a price.
Speaker 1: He hung a boulder the rock over Tantalus's head, so
Speaker 1: that while he might live like the gods to an extent,
Speaker 1: it would well always be hanging over his head. Another
Speaker 1: version of Tantalus's crime suggests that while hanging with the Olympians,
Speaker 1: as he was seemingly wont to do, he determined to
Speaker 1: steal ambrosia and nectar, the food and drink of the gods,
Speaker 1: and share it with his mortal friends. This was well
Speaker 1: not a good idea for obvious reasons, and in this
Speaker 1: case Tantalus found himself with a similar punishment to the
Speaker 1: last story punishment and Tartarus for eternity with a boulder
Speaker 1: hanging over his head, just waiting to drop. But of
Speaker 1: course it's Tantalus's most famous story that I want to
Speaker 1: talk about most because while who doesn't love a story
Speaker 1: of a father killing his son and then feeding him
Speaker 1: to the gods just because he can, this most famous
Speaker 1: and bloody and gory and generally fucked up version of
Speaker 1: Tantalus's story goes that this man, the son of Zeus, who,
Speaker 1: no matter the story, has far too high an opinion
Speaker 1: of himself when it comes to interactions with the Olympian gods,
Speaker 1: determined that he was going to invite the gods to
Speaker 1: a banquet at his home on Mount Hippolis. Tantalus had
Speaker 1: a son at this point whose name was Pelop's, and
Speaker 1: like the other versions of Tantalus's story, the gods weren't
Speaker 1: comfortable hanging out with this mortal. It was simpler times,
Speaker 1: and the gods learnt their lesson now, though they were
Speaker 1: happy to interact with the mortal, to feast with him
Speaker 1: like he was one of them, a mistake. Tantalus wanted
Speaker 1: to test the gods for reasons we don't have in
Speaker 1: any detail. He just I don't know. He was just
Speaker 1: full of himself. He wanted to see if the gods
Speaker 1: were as special as humans were being led to believe.
Speaker 1: And how does one test that theory? Well, certainly they
Speaker 1: set out to see whether the Olympian gods can distinguish
Speaker 1: flesh meant for eating from flesh of the much more
Speaker 1: human variety. So Tantalus, while he killed his son Peelops,
Speaker 1: cut him up into bite sized chunks and cooked him
Speaker 1: in some way that he was then prepared to feed
Speaker 1: to the Olympian gods to test this bizarre and inconceivable theory,
Speaker 1: and the gods very nearly proved Tantalus to be wrong,
Speaker 1: to be ridiculous forever suggesting that the gods would eat
Speaker 1: human flesh before realizing that it was not meant to
Speaker 1: be eaten. They very nearly avoided this inhumane crime because,
Speaker 1: in case it needs to be said, the practice of
Speaker 1: eating human flesh is very frowned upon by the ancient Greeks.
Speaker 1: But well, one of the Olympian gods just wasn't at
Speaker 1: her best. Demeter was distracted, She missed her daughter, Her
Speaker 1: thoughts and mind were elsewhere, And besides, who would have
Speaker 1: possibly thought to feed the gods human flesh? She shouldn't
Speaker 1: have had to watch so carefully what she was eating.
Speaker 1: Demeter took a single bite before the other gods could
Speaker 1: stop her, could point out that something about the feast
Speaker 1: served by Tantalus was very, very wrong. And anyway, where's
Speaker 1: your son, Tantalus? Why don't we hear the pitter patter
Speaker 1: of little child feet? The rest of the gods knew
Speaker 1: before Demeter when they stopped her after the one bite
Speaker 1: turning on Tantalus. They restored the boy Peelops to life,
Speaker 1: putting in back together after his father's horrific crime. But
Speaker 1: they couldn't fix that little bite that had been taken,
Speaker 1: couldn't bring the flesh back out from Demeter's stomach. So
Speaker 1: instead they gave Pilops a nice shoulder made of ivory.
Speaker 1: So he was forever special, even if he might also
Speaker 1: have to forever remember the time his father killed him
Speaker 1: and served him to the gods to eat. But for
Speaker 1: all he was restored to life. For all, he became
Speaker 1: just a little more special because of that ivory shoulder.
Speaker 1: Pelops wasn't about to escape the now generational fate of
Speaker 1: his family. When your father does something like that, it
Speaker 1: taints you. All that isn't about to just go away.
Speaker 1: It's not just the curse of the Tantalids. After all,
Speaker 1: there are three names for this curse, three generations that
Speaker 1: kept it moving. Not that the last generation escaped unscathed.
Speaker 1: But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's another story of
Speaker 1: Pelops at this time, one presented by Pindar in one
Speaker 1: of his Olympian odes. It's unique, not something that seems
Speaker 1: to appear in these details elsewhere, but it's horrifying in
Speaker 1: a new and different way, so we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about it. According to Pindar, Tantalus might not have actually
Speaker 1: fed his child to the gods because he never had
Speaker 1: the chance, or the poor boy does still get fed
Speaker 1: to the gods, and it's after he's resurrected that things
Speaker 1: managed to get even worse for him. See in this
Speaker 1: telling by Pindar, the young Pelops was spotted by none
Speaker 1: other than Poseidon, the god you never want to encounter alone,
Speaker 1: let alone tempt by just existing in a body that
Speaker 1: he finds attractive. And that's what happened to Pelops. Poseidon
Speaker 1: saw the boy and determined that he had to have him,
Speaker 1: had to make him his almost certainly unwilling lover. In
Speaker 1: Pindar's version, it's embarrassing that anyone ever managed to claim
Speaker 1: that such a crime by Tantalus ever took place. That
Speaker 1: it is simply impossible that gods ever actually ate human
Speaker 1: flesh blasphemy. Instead, the reason that Pelops was gone without
Speaker 1: a trace was that he was violently abducted by Poseidon,
Speaker 1: brought to Olympus to serve a similar fate to poor Ganymede.
Speaker 1: We won't go into detail for obvious reasons, but yes,
Speaker 1: the implication is that Pelops was missing from Tantalus's feast
Speaker 1: because Poseidon had abducted him to become his unwilling sex slave.
Speaker 1: Like I said, a very different type of horror, but horrifying. Nonetheless, frankly,
Speaker 1: that's my least favorite type of horror to talk about,
Speaker 1: despite being the most common in Greek myth. So today
Speaker 1: we're focusing more on the other horror that comes to
Speaker 1: this very very cursed family. And fortunately that's only Pindar's version,
Speaker 1: because there's an awful lot to peel ups the story
Speaker 1: that requires him to be very much still down on
Speaker 1: Earth living a vaguely normal, mythologically speaking life. He still
Speaker 1: got a brand new familial curse to deal with. But
Speaker 1: first Tantalus needs to be punished, and punished he is.
Speaker 1: Tantalus goes on to become not only the basis for
Speaker 1: the word tantalized, but one of the most famous punishments
Speaker 1: in the underworld for his transgressions, for killing and cutting
Speaker 1: up his son, cooking him in a stew, and feeding
Speaker 1: into the gods just for kicks. As a weird and
Speaker 1: vaguely baffling test for this, Tantalus is trapped in Tartarus,
Speaker 1: that darkest, most dreary depths of the underworld, where a
Speaker 1: rock hangs over his head, ready to drop at any moment,
Speaker 1: so that he never has a moment's peace. And deep
Speaker 1: in Tartarus, Tantalus stands in a pool of water, surrounded
Speaker 1: by the hydrating life source, but perpetually unable to drink
Speaker 1: from it. At the same time, food is suspended over
Speaker 1: his head, hanging fresh and ripe from magical trees that
Speaker 1: seem to sprout everything that he could possibly want. Delicious,
Speaker 1: soul soothing food hangs over him, mouth watering and forever
Speaker 1: out of reach. He cannot drink the water that surrounds him,
Speaker 1: no matter how thirsty he is, no matter how badly
Speaker 1: he tries to drink, he can't, And he can't eat
Speaker 1: the food hanging right in front of his face. He
Speaker 1: can grab at it, yank it from the tree all
Speaker 1: he wants, or perhaps be incapable of even reaching it
Speaker 1: in the first place. Regardless of the means, he is
Speaker 1: unable to eat it. Ever, he just gets to exist
Speaker 1: in Tartarus forever tantalized, say what I did there, and
Speaker 1: by me I mean the ancient Greeks and subsequently the
Speaker 1: English language. With those crimes of Tantalus, his punishments by
Speaker 1: the gods begins the curse, the curse of the Tantalids,
Speaker 1: soon to become the curse of the pelip and I
Speaker 1: because God's this family will never ever escape the curse
Speaker 1: that Tantalus started by testing the gods for no reason
Speaker 1: other than his own vain hubris. Men am I right?
Speaker 1: Speaking of men? There's one daughter amongst this cursed, cursed
Speaker 1: line of men, Niobe. She famously bragged that she was
Speaker 1: better at being a mother or at childbirth than the
Speaker 1: goddess of childbirth, mother of Artemis and Apollo Lido. As punishment,
Speaker 1: Niobe's fourteen children were killed by the gods. But I
Speaker 1: don't want to tell her story in detail today. I
Speaker 1: want to focus on the men, the man who did
Speaker 1: the killing, because killing they did, it's pelops. Were going
Speaker 1: to shift to next, the next in the cursed line,
Speaker 1: and the son of Tantalus, who will go on to
Speaker 1: inspire the next name in the cursed family line. We're
Speaker 1: shifting to the curse of the Pelipadie. Pelops grew up,
Speaker 1: he became a man of a certain age, and that
Speaker 1: certain age was when he was heading out in search
Speaker 1: of an appropriate wife. Enter Hippodamia. Hippodamia was the daughter
Speaker 1: of a king Inemias in what is not yet called
Speaker 1: the Peloponnese. For reasons I will leave you to guess.
Speaker 1: When Pelops met Hippodamia. It seems he knew immediately that
Speaker 1: he wanted to marry her. Her father, though, would do
Speaker 1: just about anything to prevent that from happening. This bit
Speaker 1: of the story is unfortunately fragmentary, but thankfully pseudo Apollodorus
Speaker 1: came along and told us some details. He also tells us,
Speaker 1: in a troubling rarity for stories like this, that Hippodamia
Speaker 1: seems to have actually felt the same for Pelops as
Speaker 1: he felt for her, or at least even if she
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily find Pelops to be the seriously hot shit
Speaker 1: that he considered himself. With what I'm about to tell
Speaker 1: you about her father, well we can make an assumption
Speaker 1: that maybe, just maybe, regardless of any passion she might
Speaker 1: have had for the man, life with Pelops might be
Speaker 1: just a little bit better than life with her father.
Speaker 1: You see, Eenimius's motivations with his daughter aren't entirely clear,
Speaker 1: but neither option are ideal. See either Eenimius had learned
Speaker 1: a prophecy from the oracle that he will be killed
Speaker 1: by the man that Hippodamia marries, or or he's quote
Speaker 1: unquote in love with her himself and thus refuses to
Speaker 1: give her up to a man in marriage. He's keeping
Speaker 1: his daughter for himself. Gross. Either way, it seems Inemius
Speaker 1: has made it a habit to kill every man who's
Speaker 1: ever shown interest in marrying his daughter. He's a chill dad,
Speaker 1: definitely someone you want to bring a boyfriend home to.
Speaker 1: Inimius has a system, though, See whenever a man comes
Speaker 1: by who wants to marry Hippodamia, Inamias says that if
Speaker 1: the man can beat him in a chariot race, then
Speaker 1: he will be welcome to marry her. The race isn't simple,
Speaker 1: but it shouldn't be impossible either. The man attempting to
Speaker 1: woo her a word that many translations are using, and
Speaker 1: I love it. The man attempting to woo her is
Speaker 1: to take Hippodamia with him on his own chariot and
Speaker 1: take off in the direction of the smiths of Corinth.
Speaker 1: They're meant to reach the Isthmus, where there is an
Speaker 1: altar to Poseidon the end of the race, and then
Speaker 1: maybe if he survived long enough to reach that altar,
Speaker 1: perhaps the man might have been able to ride off
Speaker 1: with Hippodamia into the sunset. It wasn't just any chariot race,
Speaker 1: though it was basically a race to the death. The
Speaker 1: men competing would drive their chariot, Butnomius could seemingly do
Speaker 1: anything he wanted in an attempt to stop them, Deadly
Speaker 1: weapons and straight up murder included. And so, as you
Speaker 1: might expect, none of the men who had yet attempted
Speaker 1: to beat Enemius in the chariot race, who had attempted
Speaker 1: the race so that they might marry Hippodamia, had survived
Speaker 1: to tell the tale. There are many lists of the
Speaker 1: men who have died in these past attempts to marry
Speaker 1: the young woman, men like Alcathuus, Lascius, and Eurymicus, which
Speaker 1: are just the three that appear in most of the
Speaker 1: accounts of Nimius's victims. Because well, Innimius had help from
Speaker 1: a certain god of war, one who so rarely inserts
Speaker 1: himself into the lives of mortals Aries. It's possible that
Speaker 1: Enomias was himself a child of Ares, or perhaps he
Speaker 1: just got lucky and the god of war smiled upon him.
Speaker 1: But either way, he had armor and weapons from Aries,
Speaker 1: a chariot that was seemingly unbeatable, and a driver Merdless
Speaker 1: who drove the chariot well enough that Edomias always always
Speaker 1: won the race. The men always always ended up dead,
Speaker 1: usually with the spear of Aris thrust through one of
Speaker 1: their more important body parts. Mean and Maias always won
Speaker 1: at least he won every race up until this final one.
Speaker 1: What made this race different? Why was this the time
Speaker 1: that Anomias would finally fail in his attempts to kill
Speaker 1: off every man that wanted to kill his daughter. Some
Speaker 1: might say that it was the chariot, peel Ups drover,
Speaker 1: maybe Pelops himself, But I have a more plausible reason.
Speaker 1: A woman. See this time, Hippodamia really fucking wanted to
Speaker 1: marry Pilops, and she was going to do what she
Speaker 1: could to make that happen. She also probably was keen
Speaker 1: to have her father stopped. He'd killed an awful lot
Speaker 1: of men in her name. It was time to put
Speaker 1: a stop to that. When Hippodamia fell for Pelops, she
Speaker 1: knew immediately what her father would do in his attempts
Speaker 1: to prevent her from marrying, So this time she came
Speaker 1: up with a plan. Damia spoke to her father's chariot driver, Myrtleus,
Speaker 1: and convinced him to sabotage her father's chariot so that
Speaker 1: he might finally lose. Why Myrtalus was happy to do
Speaker 1: this for Hippodamia varies depending on the source, but he
Speaker 1: very well might have been in love with her, a
Speaker 1: plot point that we will return to. Either way, Myrtalus
Speaker 1: agreed to help Hippodamia, and in helping her help Peelops
Speaker 1: win this otherwise deadly chariot race. It would be easy enough.
Speaker 1: Myrtalus decided, with I like to think the help of Hippodamia,
Speaker 1: that he would simply remove a lynchpin from Eenimias's chariot
Speaker 1: and replace it with something a little different. It was
Speaker 1: a pin meant to look the same not raise any suspicions,
Speaker 1: but it was made of wax. This way, once the
Speaker 1: chariot was going fast enough was generating enough heat, the
Speaker 1: wax lynchpin would melt and the wheels would fly off
Speaker 1: Eenamius's chariot. The chariot would fall to pieces, and Enemius
Speaker 1: would fall, or rather tumble, to his death. This is
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. Myrdalus's plan worked perfectly. Eenimius was killed
Speaker 1: by a fall from his own chariot, though he discovered
Speaker 1: what Myrtalus had done, and at the last moment of
Speaker 1: his life he called out a curse to Myrdalus that
Speaker 1: he would die at the hands of Pelops. Of course,
Speaker 1: everyone kind of just ignored the dying man's curse. Pelops
Speaker 1: was able to marry Hippodamia as he'd hoped and planned,
Speaker 1: or rather as she had hoped and planned. I think
Speaker 1: she's made it perfectly clear that she has the brains
Speaker 1: in this relationship. Can you tell that I'm feeling particularly
Speaker 1: righteously angrily feminist right now? Long live Hippodamia, But her
Speaker 1: ordeal with her father and chariots and messy, even deadly
Speaker 1: relationships wasn't finished yet. Merdalus, you see, took to heart
Speaker 1: that he'd been the one to help Hippodamia, ignoring the
Speaker 1: fact that she did pretty explicitly ask him to help her.
Speaker 1: So that she could marry Pelops. Myrdalus wasn't interested in
Speaker 1: that factor. So, according to our most detailed source on
Speaker 1: this bit, after Hippodamia, Pelops, and Mertalus had successfully defeated Enemius,
Speaker 1: they were traveling back, or perhaps just traveling elsewhere, It
Speaker 1: isn't clear. What's clear is that the three of them
Speaker 1: were traveling and at one point they stopped along the way.
Speaker 1: Pelops were told went off in search of water for
Speaker 1: his wife nice and once he was away from Merderalis
Speaker 1: and Hippodamia, well, Myrdalus tried to rape her. He it seems,
Speaker 1: felt that he was owed something from her, a tale
Speaker 1: as old as time. Fortunately, Pelops finds out about Mertalus's
Speaker 1: attempted to assault and he throws him off a cliff into
Speaker 1: the sea. Nothing he didn't deserve if you ask me.
Speaker 1: But wow, this is a cursed family after all. So
Speaker 1: as Myrtalus was falling to his death into a sea
Speaker 1: that would go on to take his name, he called
Speaker 1: out a curse on Pelops and his family. For a while,
Speaker 1: Pelops and Hippodamia forgot about the curse, or at least
Speaker 1: they didn't let it run their lives. Pelops was purified
Speaker 1: for the killings of Enemias and Myrtalus, and eventually, though
Speaker 1: we are missing any details, he took enough control over
Speaker 1: the region that would become the Peloponnese to well call
Speaker 1: it the Peloponnese. He and Hippodamia had four children, but
Speaker 1: only two that we care about, Atreus and Thiistes, and
Speaker 1: everyone lived happily ever after, and nobody killed and ate
Speaker 1: anyone else's children. No one sacrificed their daughter for a
Speaker 1: bit of wind, no one started sleeping with their cousin's wife,
Speaker 1: only to plot that cousin's murder along with that wife,
Speaker 1: and definitely no one's children then killed their mother and
Speaker 1: were hounded by the furies. Just kidding. Next week we're
Speaker 1: diving into Seneca's play Thiistes. I love Spooky Season. Third's
Speaker 1: thank you as always for listening. I am so excited
Speaker 1: for this year's spooky season, not least because I've discovered
Speaker 1: that I somehow love a Roman playwright so much that
Speaker 1: I am dying to read Thyestes and share it all
Speaker 1: with you, but also because well, I'm just gonna have
Speaker 1: some fun this spooky season and like really throw everything
Speaker 1: imaginable at you because Greek myth is horrifying in the
Speaker 1: most enjoyable of ways. Let's make this ending short and
Speaker 1: sweet today, shall we? As always, Here is a five
Speaker 1: star review from one of you amazing listeners. This one
Speaker 1: is from Nat and JP in Canada. Incredible. I've been
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast for months now and it's been
Speaker 1: my favorite since the beginning. I'm not much of a
Speaker 1: fan of podcasts, but this is the only exception. I've
Speaker 1: learned a lot about myths and had fun and laughs
Speaker 1: along the way. I recommend this podcast to all of
Speaker 1: my friends when they say they want to learn more
Speaker 1: about Greek mythology. Thank you. That review is lovely. You
Speaker 1: were all the best. Consider leaving me a review on Apple.
Speaker 1: Would you and Spotify listeners stay tuned. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: up a poll after this episode because I want to
Speaker 1: know what your favorite part of spooky season is. It is,
Speaker 1: after all, my favorite time of year. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: its Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert MICHAELA.
Speaker 1: Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians, perhaps more colloquially
Speaker 1: known as the assistant producer. The podcast is hosted and
Speaker 1: monetized by iHeartMedia listen on Spotify or wherever. Year podcasts
Speaker 1: helped me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology
Speaker 1: and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron, where you'll
Speaker 1: get bonus episodes end up more visit patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash mis baby, or click the link in this episode
Speaker 1: of description. I don't know, I do that so fast.
Speaker 1: I am live, and I love this shit. But I
Speaker 1: love it even more when I get to dedicate a
Speaker 1: month to dark and dreary and violent and bloody and
Speaker 1: lots of people killing their family members because Greek myth