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Sisyphus

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Sisyphus (in Greek Σίσυφος, Sísyphos) was the founding king of Ephyra (the future Corinth). He was considered the shrewdest of all mortals, but also the most arrogant and deceitful. He committed a series of grave offenses against the gods that earned him the most famous punishment of the underworld.

His main crimes against the gods:

  1. He betrayed a secret of Zeus
    Zeus had abducted the nymph Aegina. Her father, the river Asopus, was searching for his daughter. Sisyphus revealed to Asopus that it was Zeus who had kidnapped her, in exchange for the river making an eternal spring burst forth on the acropolis of Corinth (the spring of Peirene). Zeus, furious at the betrayal, ordered Thanatos (Death personified) to take him to Tartarus.

  2. He chained Death itself
    When Thanatos came down to fetch him, Sisyphus tricked him and bound him with strong chains. While Death was a prisoner, no one on earth could die (not even the war-wounded or the gravely ill). Ares, god of war, was enraged because battles lost their thrill if no one died, so he freed Thanatos and handed over Sisyphus.

  3. The last trick (even after death)
    Before going down to the underworld for good, Sisyphus gave a strange order to his wife Merope:
    «When I die, do not give me funeral rites or place the coin under my tongue for Charon».
    Once in Hades, Sisyphus complained to Persephone (queen of the underworld) that his wife had buried him without the due rites and without the coin for the ferryman. He asked permission to return for three days to the world of the living “only to punish his wife and arrange his own funeral.”
    Persephone, taking pity, let him go up… and Sisyphus never came back. He lived many more years in Corinth until he died of old age.

  4. The definitive punishment
    When he finally died for real, the gods no longer let themselves be deceived. Zeus (or Hades, according to the versions) imposed on him the eternal punishment that bears his name:
    To push an enormous rock from the base to the summit of a hill (or mountain) in Tartarus. Every time he is about to crown the summit, the rock rolls down by its own weight and Sisyphus must go down and start again. Forever.

This punishment was especially cruel because it combined exhausting physical effort with eternal frustration: he never managed to complete the task.

In pure Greek mythology, Sisyphus is the symbol of the man who defies the gods with his excessive intelligence and pays with a punishment that represents eternal futility and frustration.

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