The story of Pelops:

• Son of Tantalos, king of Lydia , tho his mother bore a Greek name (Kalyke).  At a feast, his father slaughtered him and served him to the gods.  Fortunately, only Demeter took a bite, from his shoulder.  When the gods learned what had happened, they restored him to life, but had to give him an ivory shoulder ‑‑which made him unusually beautiful.  Hereafter all Pelopidae had a white mark on their shoulders.  (Other versions report that he was often ill in his youth and had to be operated on several times which left a scar).
• Later Poseidon fell in love with the boy and kidnapped him to Mt. Olympus.  When his mother who was searching for him heard that he had been slaughtered, eaten and later abducted, she appealed to the gods and Poseidon was forced to return him to the earth.
• When he had grown up he asked (because of his earlier love) Poseidon for a gift and received golden chariot with never‑tiring, winged horses which could also transport him over water.  Poseidon advised him to leave his homeland and to seek his fortune in Greece by competing for the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oinomaos, at Pisa.
• O. was ready to give his daughter to the man who could escape from his chariot and Ares‑given horses.  Those who lost, lost their lives; their heads were hung on the palace walls. It had been predicted that he would die when his daughter married. 
• The "competition" was a kind of bride‑napping whereby Pelops seized Hippodamia and Oinomaos followed (Hippodamia is always shown in the chariot).  Pelops won the race to the Isthmus (to the altar of Poseidon), Oinomaos was killed when his chariot lost the linchpin and he was dragged to his death.  (In one variant, P., when he saw the heads of his predecessors, bribed the stable boy of O. to dislodge the linchpin or to substitute a wax one; this is unlikely as P. was later reckoned the founder of the Olympic games).  On the return to Pisa, Myrtilos, the stable boy wanted to kiss H., P. was incensed and threw him into the sea.  He died cursing the family of P.
• P. and H. had six sons, among them Atreus.  P. also had an illegitimate son, Chrsippos, by his true love Axioche.  Chr. was stolen by the Theban Laios whom P. cursed to never have a son or to be killed by his own.  Hippodamia, fearing that her own children would be disadvantage, urged Atreus and another brother to kill Chr.  P. learned of it and sent mother and sons into exile and cursed them.  The sons became the kings of various Peloponnesian states.
• To encourage strife, Hermes set out a golden ram, the symbol of sovereignty, Atreus and Thyestes contend.  The former invites the latter to dinner and serves up the latter's children whom the father consumes.  The pollution meant that he could not be king. 
• Atreus' son, Agamemnon marries Clytemnestra and has three children.  On the way to Troy, and to get favorable winds, he sacrifices his daughter, Iphigeneia.  Clytemnestra is incensed and enters an affair/conspiracy with Aegisteus, a surviving son the polluted Thyestes.  When Agamemnon returns, he is killed by the two lovers.  The children, Electra and Orestes seek blood vengeance and kill their mother to avenge the father in what is now a clear cycle of violence and pollution from which there is not exit.

Review of myths: significance.  Note that there are many cycles that deal with the history of different royal families (note the stress is on royal families, not peoples or cities).  The myths overlap on many points, especially the Seven against Thebes I and II, and at Troy.

• As aspects of these myths appear in many literary sources, in the folk tradition and as archaeology supports the general story line it is reasonable to believe that they constitute a valid record of the pre‑historic past.
• In contrast to the later period, these tales are not narrowly nationalist ‑‑Athenians do indeed have their stories of Theseus and Athenian unification, but they are also interested in the past of their great rivals Thebes and Sparta and also in the (to them) insignificant Mycenae.  The myths reflect then aspects of an era of "internationalism" not known in the classical period.  "Achaeans" is general term Homer employs for the Greeks of the bronze age. 
• Society clearly aristocratic in orientation; tales of heroes, nothing of the "common man"; confirmed in Homer.  Even when the tragedies of the classical are set in the bronze age, the "people" are the virtually helpless and undifferentiated chorus.  Warrior kings ('war‑lords') dominate the state.
• The prevalence of 'clever tricks', blood‑feud and lawlessness (note the function of incest and eating one's children re‑enforce the lack of any 'law' or 'convention') indicates that bronze age society generally lacked institutional structures for the maintenance of order; note plot and themes of the great Sophoclean trilogy "The Oresteia" and the concern to establish institutions of human justice; blood feud was always a threat to high and low alike. 
• Other indications of historical reality; the movement of people from Anatolia and Armenia into Greece, the thalassocracy of Crete and Minos (towns with the name Minoa) and of Agamemnon's Mycenae; the triumph of the indo‑european peoples (horse‑rearing, worshipping male gods) warrior class over the more agrarian and fertility‑cult oriented neolithic peoples.  Theseus