J54 HISTORY OF GREECE. a higher decree of poetical interest and pathos, than that of the Pelopids Tantalus, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Menelaus and jEgisthus, Helen and Klytaemnestra, Orestes and Elektra and Hermione. Each of these characters is a star of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere : each name suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some harrowing tragedy : the curse which taints the family from the beginning inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric and tragic poets. It will be sufficient to touch briefly upon events with which every reader of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar, and to offer some remarks upon the way in which they were col- ored and modified by different Grecian authors. Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnesus : to find an eponym for every conspicuous local name was the invaria- ble turn of Grecian retrospective fancy. The name Peloponnesus is not to be found either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor any other denomination which can be attached distinctly and specially to the entire peninsula. But we meet with the name in one of the most ancient post-Homeric poems of which any fragments have been preserved the Cyprian Verses a poem which many (seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodo- tus ascribed to the author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contra- dicts the opinion. 1 The attributes by which the Pelopid Aga- memnon and his house are marked out and distinguished from the other heroes of the Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian imagination would naturally seek in an eponymus superior wealth, power, splendor and regality. Not only Agamemnon 1 Hesiod. ii. 117. Fragment Epicc. Grsec. Diintzer, ix. Kinrpta, 8. Atya re Avy/cet)? TaiiyeTov irpoae/3aive iroaiv ra^eeoai Trejrni&ijf, 'Axporarov 6' uvaftaf dieSepKETO vqaov unaaav Also the Homeric Hymn. Apoll. 419, 430, and Tyrtaeus, Fragm. I. (Ei vofila) 'Evpeiav IleAoTrof vi/aov u The Schol. ad Iliad, ix. 246, intimates that the name Ue^oTrovvrjffOf occurred m one or more of the Hesiodic epics.
