Abstract
The winning of Hippodameia is recounted memorably if also sparingly by Pindar in his first Olympian ode, composed for Hieron of Syracuse, winner of the horse race in the Olympic Games of 476 B.C.E.1 The princess was the prize in the archetypal athletic contest at Olympia, instituted by King Oinomaos of Pisa when he offered his daughter Hippodameia to the first youth who should beat him in a chariot race; suitors who lost the race forfeited their lives. Oinomaos outraced a succession of challengers but eventually lost to Pelops, a youth from Lydia or Phrygia. Since the king perished in the race, Pelops acquired both a bride and a kingdom. The young monarch presently enlarged his realm, naming it Peloponnesos, and in one tradition also went on to found the Olympic Games.2
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