Sources & Notes to Tantalus and the Olympians 476 BCE Pindar  Olympian Odes, 1 408 BCE         Euripides       Orestes, 12-16 140 BCE Apollodorus     Epitomes 2: 1-9 8 CE    Ovid    Metamorphoses, VI: 213, 458 1st c. CE       Hyginus         Fables, 82: Tantalus; 83: Pelops 160 - 176 CE    Pausanias       Description of Greece, 2.22.3 1. It appears that by Classical times the shamanic dimensions of this myth were forgotten. Pindar, the oldest source of information about the feast, recoils (or claims to) at the thought of the gods 'gorging' on human flesh. 2. The role of Demeter, the principal deity of the Eleusinian mysteries and the presiding deity at Tantalus' feast, as well as her significance in a shamanic myth in which the father is given Promethean dimensions for his theft of 'the food of the gods' and the son undergoes mystical death and transfiguration, attaining (temporary!) immortality, is fertile ground for analysis, but the ramifications are too complex to explore here. 3. Pelops' epithets underline his claim to fame: 'the mighty charioteer,' 'the Phrygian Charioteer,' etc. 4. The standard version of the tale, in which Tantalus is punished for 'trying to fool the gods' seems to be an interpretation lent the story in later days, when the 'cannibalism' of the story was no longer understood in its original, shamanic and symbolic context. Once the sacrifice of the boy was interpreted literally, the gods had to somehow be exonerated, and the deed had to be punished. The present version is intended to be more consistent with the apparent original thrust of the tale.