Chrysippus- Greek FigureMortal"Son of Pelops"

The Beloved Bastard

Chrysippus — whose name means "golden horse," befitting the line of Pelops the charioteer — was the illegitimate son of King Pelops by the nymph Axioche. He was beautiful, and Pelops doted on him openly, teaching him horsemanship and bringing him to the great games. His queen Hippodamia watched this favoritism and feared for her own sons' inheritance.

Laius, the young prince of Thebes, had been driven from his city as a boy when Amphion and Zethus seized the Theban throne. Pelops took him in, gave him shelter, and entrusted him with Chrysippus's education. Laius repaid this hospitality by abducting the boy, carrying him off during the Nemean Games. Pelops cursed him for the betrayal: Laius would die by his own son's hand. The curse held. When Laius fathered Oedipus, he tried to destroy the infant to escape the prophecy and was killed on the road by the grown son he thought dead.

Death

Hippodamia wanted Chrysippus dead. She persuaded her sons Atreus and Thyestes to murder their half-brother, fearing Pelops would name him heir over them. Hyginus records a different version: Hippodamia stabbed Chrysippus herself with Laius's sword, hoping to frame the Theban prince. Fragments of Euripides' lost Chrysippus suggest the boy took his own life out of shame after the abduction.

However he died, the consequences were the same. Pelops banished Hippodamia for her part in it, and she died in exile. Atreus and Thyestes, whether guilty of the murder or merely tainted by it, carried the stain of fratricide into their own reigns. The violence that began with Chrysippus's blood would not stop until Orestes stood trial for cutting down his own mother.