Earth Culture of Origin
Greece, Mycenaen region
Alternate Names / Spellings
The Creator, the Giver of Days
Herald of the gods of Olympus
Chariot drawn by winged horses, lightning bolt
Earth Mythological References
Pelops was the son of the Lydian king, Tantalus. His mother may have been the goddess Dione, or possibly one of the Pleiades (Seven Sisters). There are two major accounts of Pelops, for whom the Pelopponesus region of Mycenae is named. One features him being killed by his father and served up to the gods for dinner as a test of their divinity, after which Pelops was restored whole except for a piece of his shoulder that the goddess Demeter had inadvertently eaten. She replaced that part with a piece of ivory.
The second account states that Pelops, who was a beautiful young man, caught the eye of the god Poseidon, who carried him off for a romantic interlude and gifted him with a chariot and a team of winged horses. With this gift and an under-the-table deal, Pelops won the hand of his wife, Hippodamia, from her father, Oenomaus, king of Pisa. Pelops had many children and was famous for piety and hospitality, in spite of the treachery and murder he committed to attain power. His most famous descendant was Heracles (Hercules), and both Pelops and Heracles have been credited with originating the Olympic Games.
While Pelops did not make a personal appearance in the episode in which he was introduced, a statue of him on the planet Argos gave a physical representation of him. The statue was shown standing in a chariot, holding a lightning bolt above his head, as if to cast it down.
In an effort to study human physiology and evolution, research presumably geared toward improving Goa’uld hosts, Pelops implanted the people settled on that world with a nanovirus that aged everyone one year in the space of a single night. The virus was transmitted through physical contact, and when Col. O’Neill unknowingly married Kynthia, an Argosian woman, he was infected on his wedding night and consequently aged at a rapid rate. The source of the aging was identified and the controller for the nanovirus discovered in the base of Pelops’ statue. Once the device was deactivated, the Argosians began to age naturally and O’Neill was returned to his correct physiological age.
Pelops had not made an appearance at Argos for a very long time, and while the Argosians were initially horrified at destroying the image of their god, once they understood what was being done to them by the nanoviruses Pelops gave them, the Argosians embraced Pelops’ downfall and rejoiced in their freedom from his tyranny.
--Adapted from lexicon by: DeeKayP 12:33, 16 Oct 2004 (PDT)