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He had felt the beauty and glory of the chivalrous Middle Age as deeply as Shakspeare himself: he had as much classical lore as any Oxford pedant. 'Of gorgeous tragedy, Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line, Or the Tale of Troy divine, Or what, though rare, of later age, Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage.
Some of the characteristics of the tale are to be found in the story of Pelops and Cillas, related above, which Mr. Gerould does not mention. Pausanias has a story of one of Ulysses' crew. Ulysses' ship was driven about by the winds from one city to another in Sicily and Italy, and in the course of these wanderings it touched at Tecmessa.
Of that light in the life of a man before all other deeds, that first of contests, the ordinances of Zeus have stirred me to sing, even the games which by the ancient tomb of Pelops the mighty Herakles founded, after that he slew Kleatos, Poseidon's goodly son, and slew also Eurytos, that he might wrest from tyrannous Augeas against his will reward for service done .
And she told him that she was the daughter of Erechtheus, King of Athens, and that she was married to Xuthus, a Prince from the island of Pelops.
And Pelops had always disliked me and had always envied and hated Agathemer. We were keyed up with anxiety. Just as we recognized Pelops a tall, red-headed, sandy lout, with a long neck and a prominent gullet-knot, came forward into sight from the direction of the entrance, apparently from beyond the fire.
It is memorable in the beginning of history for its barbarian kings and nobles, whose names stand as commonplaces and proverbs of wealth and luxury. The magnificence of Pelops imparts lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. The name of Croesus, King of Lydia, whom I have already had occasion to mention, goes as a proverb for his enormous riches.
The absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic art from which the sufferings of Thebes and Pelops' line are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong Aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the drama that it would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain.
Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world, "Presenting Thebes' and Pelops' line And the tale of Troy divine." The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature; and more recently not only Pope and Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced.
Afterwards, when the charioteer asked a reward, Pelops threw him into the sea; and this was the second crime that brought a doom on the race. Pelops gave his name to the whole peninsula now called the Morea, or mulberry-leaf, but which was all through ancient times known as the Peloponnesus, or Isle of Pelops.
In the first, he justly reflects on Gorgias, if he were what he was thought to be, a dissolute and profligate character; but in the other, he rather meanly expostulates and complains with Pelops, for neglecting to procure him a decree of certain honors from the Byzantines.
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