Moreover, irreligious people are notoriously superstitious, and at this
period it would be very difficult to say just where religion ended and
superstition began.

We have one or two ghost stories connected with early Greek mythology.
Cillas, the charioteer of Pelops, though Troezenius gives his name as
Sphærus, died on the way to Pisa, and appeared to Pelops by night,
begging that he might be duly buried. Pelops took pity on him and
burnt[85] his body with all ceremony, raised a huge mound in his honour,
and built a chapel to the Cillean Apollo near it. He also named a town
after him. Strabo even says that there was a mound in Cillas' honour at
Crisa in the Troad. This dutiful attention did not go unrewarded. Cillas
appeared to Pelops again, and thanked him for all he had done, and to
Cillas also he is said to have owed the information by which he was able
to overthrow OEnomaus in the famous chariot race which won him the
hand of Hippodamia. Pelops' shameless ingratitude to OEnomaus's
charioteer, Myrtilus, who had removed the pin of his master's chariot,
and thus caused his defeat and death in order to help Pelops, on the
promise of the half of the kingdom, is hardly in accordance with his
treatment of Cillas, though it is thoroughly Greek. However, on the
theory that a man who betrays one master will probably betray another,
especially if he is to be rewarded for his treachery with as much as
half a kingdom, Pelops was right in considering that Myrtilus was best
out of the way; and he can hardly have foreseen the curse that was to
fall upon his family in consequence.

With this story we may compare the well-known tale of the poet
Simonides, who found an unknown corpse on the shore, and honoured it
with burial.[86] Soon afterwards he happened to be on the point of