You've probably heard of the House of Atreus or the Oresteia, but you may not know that their ancestor was Tantalus. Tantalus is known in myth for a horrible deed while still alive and horrible punishment ever after, in Tartarus, as well as the English verb tantalize.
Tantalus had three children, two sons and a daughter. Pelops and Niobe host their own sets of myths and come into contact with some other colorful figures from Greek mythology. Here you will learn about Tantalus, his family, who established houses far from their Lydian homeland, in Thebes and the Peloponnese, and some of the people they encountered.
1. Tantalus
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Tantalus was a son of Zeus who married the nymph Dione. He fathered three children and offered one up as a feast to the gods. Thanks to divine intervention, the child was reassembled and lived. At the start of Seneca's Thyestes, Tantalus predicts his descendants' crimes will make his pale by comparison.
- "Ancestors, Status, and Self-Presentation in Statius' 'Thebaid'"
Neil W. Bernstein Transactions of the American Philological Association
Vol. 133, No. 2 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 353-379
2. Niobe
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Niobe was the sole daughter of the Lydian King Tantalus. She married Theban King Amphion by whom she had 12 or 14 children. The story of Niobe's tragedy was a popular one among the ancient writers. Her boasts that she was better off than Artemis and Apollo's mother had devastating consequences. In the end, Niobe became Mt. Sipylus, in Lydia.
3. Pelops
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Pelops was the gorgeous son of Tantalus who was cooked up and then restored, minus a shoulder. He wished to marry the lovely Hippodamia of Pisa, but to do so he had to win a chariot race against her incestuous father. With the help of the charioteer, a son of Hermes, he succeeded. He and his jealous wife Hippodamia had two sons who murdered another son of Pelops to please their mother.
4. Tiresias
Actually, it's the blind seer Tiresias' daughter, Manto, who warns Niobe to honor the children of Latona/Leto, Artemis and Apollo, but Tiresias is far more familiar from the legends of Thebes, since it is he/she who reveals the twisted reality that Oedipus fails to see.
5. Hippodamia
Hippodamia's claim to fame is as the daughter of the incestuous King Oenomaus of Pisa and the wife of Pelops. She also gave birth to Thyestes and Atreus of the House of Atreus fame.6. Oenomaus
Pelops defeated and killed King Oenomaus of Pisa in a fixed chariot race and then instituted the Olympic games to honor the king.7. Myrtilus
Myrtilus was in love with Hippodamia who was in love with Pelops. She persuaded Myrtilus to help fix the race Pelops had to win against King Oenomaus in order for Hippodamia to marry him. When Myrtilus tried to rape Hippodamia, Pelops killed him, but before he died, Myrtilus cursed Pelops' family.8. Amphion and Zethas
Courtesy of Wikipedia
Amphion and Zethas were twin boys, sons of Zeus and Amphion, who were abandoned at birth (exposed on Mount Cithaeron) and later grew up to claim their rightful inheritance -- Thebes. They destroyed the people who were ruling and set about walling the city.
Amphion was taught by Hermes to play the lyre, which Amphion improved when he met Niobe of Lydia, by adding three extra strings and creating the first 7-string lyre. Amphion, too, failed to honor Artemis' mother and paid for it in the afterlife.
