The poet Pindar and Lydian Pelops

Although by the fifth century B.C. the myth of Pelops was very well-known among Greeks, and especially in the Peloponnese, versions of the myth differed on where he came from, and in archaic and classical Greece he was most often said to be Phrygian. Nonetheless the poet Pindar, in the odes that he wrote for victorious athletes, repeatedly refers to Pelops’s importance at the great religious sanctuary of Olympia and describes Pelops as Lydian. This paper will consider what contemporary views of Lydia and the Lydians may have led Pindar to his identification of Lydian Pelops, taking account of the widespread belief in Lydian wealth and also of the rich dedications made at Delphi, the other great religious sanctuary in Greece, by Lydian kings. Reference will also be made to the cult of Pelops at Olympia and to beliefs about Pelops’s father Tantalos and his sister Niobe (who was closely attached to Lydia).