

īefore King Sisyphus died however, he had told his wife to throw his naked body into the middle of the public square (purportedly as a test of his wife's love for him). The exasperated Ares freed Thanatos and turned King Sisyphus over to Thanatos as well. Eventually Ares (who was annoyed that his battles had lost their fun because his opponents would not die) intervened. This caused an uproar since no human could die with Thanatos out of commission. As Thanatos was granting his wish, Sisyphus then seized the advantage and trapped Thanatos instead. King Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked. Zeus then ordered Thanatos: god of death to chain King Sisyphus down below in Tartarus. King Sisyphus also betrayed one of Zeus's secrets by telling the river god Asopus of the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina (an Asopides who was taken away by Zeus) in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthian Acropolis. He seduced his niece Tyro in one of his plots to kill Salmoneus, only for Tyro to slay the children she bore by him when she discovered that Sisyphus was planning on eventually using them to dethrone her father Salmoneus. From Homer onwards, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men.
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Sisyphus and Salmoneus were known to hate each other as Sisyphus had consulted with the Oracle of Delphi on just how to kill Salmoneus without incurring any severe consequences for himself. He took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his iron-fisted rulership. He also killed travellers and guests, a violation of Xenia which fell under Zeus' domain. King Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce but was avaricious and deceitful. He was the father of Glaucus, Ornytion, Almus, and Thersander by the nymph Merope, the brother of Salmoneus, and the grandfather of Bellerophon through Glaucus. Only every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again.Sisyphus was son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, and the founder and first king of Ephyra (supposedly the original name of Corinth). For his assignment was to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill. For a crime against the gods - the specifics of which are variously reported - he was condemned to an eternity at hard labor.

Eventually he was hauled down to Hades, where his indiscretions caught up with him. But even this paramount trickster could only postpone the inevitable. Kindly Persephone assented, and Sisyphus made his way back to the sunshine, where he promptly forgot all about funerals and such drab affairs and lived on in dissipation for another good stretch of time.

Surely her highness could see that Sisyphus must be given leave to journey back topside and put things right. What's more, as an unburied corpse he had no business on the far side of the river Styx at all - his wife hadn't placed a coin under his tongue to secure passage with Charon the ferryman. He simply told his wife not to bury him and then complained to Persephone, Queen of the Dead, that he had not been accorded the proper funeral honors. But the wily one had another trick up his sleeve. Finally Hades was released and Sisyphus was ordered summarily to report to the Underworld for his eternal assignment. A soldier might be chopped to bits in battle and still show up at camp for dinner. Hades had brought along a pair of handcuffs, a comparative novelty, and Sisyphus expressed such an interest that Hades was persuaded to demonstrate their use - on himself.Īnd so it came about that the high lord of the Underworld was kept locked up in a closet at Sisyphus's house for many a day, a circumstance which put the great chain of being seriously out of whack. His greatest triumph came at the end of his life, when the god Hades came to claim him personally for the kingdom of the dead. He was notorious as the most cunning knave on earth. Sisyphus was founder and king of Corinth, or Ephyra as it was called in those days. Sinner condemned in Tartarus to an eternity of rolling a boulder uphill then watching it roll back down again. Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology: Sisyphus Search.
