Pelops had a traumatic childhood experience. His father Tantalus chopped up his son, made a stew of his body, and served it to the gods. Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, absentmindedly ate his shoulder. Zeus was enraged at Tantalus and allowed Poseidon to rape him before giving Pelops a new shoulder of ivory. Poseidon fell in love with the youth and took him to Olympus as his page. Pelops was educated by the god who could make everything tremble (since Poseidon was the god of earthquakes). When “the first beard came to darken his cheek” Pelops decided to marry and asked Poseidon to help him if he ever had “any joy of [his] love”. The god had, and assisted his page in winning the hand of fair Hippodamia, the daughter of a king in Pisa. Poseidon sang a wedding song for Pelops.