The Myth of Sisyphus
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos (/ˈsɪsɪfəs/ ; Ancient Greek: Σίσυφος, romanized: Sísyphos ) is the founder and king of Ephyra (now known as Corinth). He reveals Zeus's abduction of Aegina to the river god Asopus, thereby incurring Zeus's wrath. His subsequent cheating of death earns him eternal punishment in the underworld, once he dies of old age.
Through the classical influence on contemporary culture, tasks that are laborious, futile (pointless), and never-ending are therefore often described as Sisyphean (/sɪsɪˈfiːən/).
Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi.
In Philoctetes by Sophocles, there is a reference to the father of Odysseus (rumoured to have been Sisyphus, and not Laërtes, whom we know as the father in the Odyssey) upon having returned from the dead. Euripides, in Cyclops, also identified Sisyphus as Odysseus's father.
Cheating death
Sisyphus betrayed one of Zeus's secrets by revealing the whereabouts of the Asopid Aegina to her father, the river god Asopus, in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthian acropolis.
Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. But Sisyphus sensed him coming, and seized the opportunity to trap Thanatos himself in chains instead. Once Thanatos was bound by the strong chains, no one died on Earth, causing an uproar. Ares, the god of war, perhaps annoyed that his battles had become less entertaining because his opponents would not die, intervened and freed Thanatos, enabling deaths to happen again, and turned Sisyphus over to him.
Hades Chained
In some versions Hades was sent to chain Sisyphus and was chained himself. As long as Hades was trapped, nobody could die. Consequently, sacrifices could not be made to the gods, and those that were old and sick were suffering. The gods finally threatened to make life so miserable for Sisyphus that he would wish he were dead. He then had no choice but to release Hades.
Before Sisyphus died, he had told his wife to throw his naked corpse into the middle of the public square (purportedly as a test of his wife's love for him). This caused Sisyphus to end up on the shores of the river Styx when he was brought to the underworld. Complaining to either Hades or Persephone that this was a sign of his wife's disrespect for him, Sisyphus persuaded her to allow him to return to the upper world, in order to scold his wife for not burying his body and giving it a proper funeral as a loving wife should. But when back in the world of the living, Sisyphus refused to return to the Underworld. He returned many years later either from dying of advanced age, or being forcibly dragged back there by Hermes.
Hades Chained
In another version of the myth, Persephone was tricked by Sisyphus that he had been conducted to Tartarus by mistake, and so she ordered that he be released.
Punishment in the underworld
As a punishment for his crimes, Hades made Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus himself. Hades accordingly displayed his own cleverness by enchanting the boulder into rolling away from Sisyphus before he reached the top, which ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration.
Tantalus' Punishment in Hades
The oldest surviving reference to Tantalus is the Odyssey. Odysseus sees him there when he journeys to Hades, standing in a pool of water up to his chin beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever Tantalus reached for the fruit, the wind blew the branches out of his reach; whenever he tried to drink, the water receded before he could reach it. However, the crime for which this is the punishment is not mentioned.