InGreek mythology,Sisyphus orSisyphos (/ˈsɪsɪfəs/ⓘ;Ancient Greek:Σίσυφος,romanized: Sísyphos) is the founder and king ofEphyra (now known asCorinth). He revealsZeus's abduction ofAegina to the river godAsopus, thereby incurring Zeus's wrath. His subsequent cheating of death earns him eternal punishment in theunderworld, once he dies of old age. The gods forced him to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top, repeating this action foreternity. Through theclassical influence on contemporary culture, tasks that are bothlaborious andfutile are therefore described asSisyphean (/sɪsɪˈfiːən/).[2]
R. S. P. Beekes has suggested apre-Greek origin and a connection with the root of the wordsophos (σοφός, "wise").[3] GermanmythographerOtto Gruppe thought that the name derived fromsisys (σίσυς, "a goat's skin"), in reference to a rain-charm in which goats' skins were used.[4]
Sisyphus was the founder and first king of Ephyra (supposedly the original name ofCorinth).[8] While king, according toPausanias, he founded theIsthmian games in honor ofMelicertes, whose dead body was brought to shore on theIsthmus of Corinth by adolphin.[13] In a fragment ofPindar, he instead founds the games (in honour of Melicertes) upon the instructions of a group of nymphs.[14]
Sisyphus and his brotherSalmoneus were known to hate each other, and Sisyphus consulted theOracle of Delphi on just how to kill Salmoneus without incurring any severe consequences for himself. FromHomer onward, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. He seduced Salmoneus's daughterTyro in one of his plots to kill Salmoneus, only for Tyro to slay their children when she discovered that Sisyphus was planning on using them to eventually dethrone her father.
Sisyphus betrayed one of Zeus's secrets by revealing the whereabouts of theAsopidAegina to her father, the river godAsopus, in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthianacropolis.[8]
Zeus orderedThanatos to chain Sisyphus inTartarus. 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 diverting because his opponents would not die, intervened and freed Thanatos, enabling deaths to happen again, and turned Sisyphus over to him.[15]
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.[16][better source needed]
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 riverStyx when he was brought to theunderworld. Complaining to either Hades orPersephone that this was a sign of his wife's disrespect for him, Sisyphus persuaded her to allow him to return to theupper world, in order to scold his wife for not burying his body and giving it a proper funeral as a loving wife should do.[17] 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 byHermes.[18][19]
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.[20]
InPhiloctetes bySophocles, there is a reference to the father of Odysseus (rumoured to have been Sisyphus, and notLaërtes, whom we know as the father in theOdyssey) upon having returned from the dead.[clarification needed]Euripides, inCyclops, also identified Sisyphus as Odysseus's father.
As a punishment for his crimes, Hades made Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill inTartarus.[8][21][22] The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to hishubristic 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. Thus, pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as "Sisyphean". Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painterPolygnotus on the walls of theLesche atDelphi.[23]
Sisyphus as a symbol for continuing a senseless war.Johann Vogel:Meditationes emblematicae de restaurata pace Germaniae, 1649
According to thesolar theory, King Sisyphus is the disk of the sun that rises every day in the east and then sinks into the west.[24] Other scholars regard him as a personification of waves rising and falling, or of the treacherous sea.[24] The 1st-century BCEpicurean philosopherLucretius interprets the myth of Sisyphus as personifying politicians aspiring for political office who are constantly defeated, with the quest for power, in itself an "empty thing", being likened to rolling the boulder up the hill.[25]Friedrich Welcker suggested that he symbolises the vain struggle of man in the pursuit of knowledge, andSalomon Reinach[26] that his punishment is based on a picture in which Sisyphus was represented rolling a huge stoneAcrocorinthus, symbolic of the labour and skill involved in the building of the Sisypheum.Albert Camus, in his 1942 essayThe Myth of Sisyphus, saw Sisyphus as personifying the absurdity of human life, but Camus concludes "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" as "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." In his 1994The Body of Myth,J. Nigro Sansonese,[27] building on the work ofGeorges Dumézil, speculates that the origin of the name "Sisyphus" is onomatopoetic of the continual back-and-forth, susurrant sound ("siss phuss") made by the breath in the nasal passages, situating the mythology of Sisyphus in a far larger context of archaic (seeProto-Indo-European religion) trance-inducing techniques related to breath control. The repetitive inhalation–exhalation cycle is described esoterically in the myth as an up–down motion of Sisyphus and his boulder on a hill.
In experiments that test how workers respond when the meaning of their task is diminished, the test condition is referred to as the Sisyphusian condition. The two main conclusions of the experiment are that people work harder when their work seems more meaningful, and that people underestimate the relationship between meaning and motivation.[28]
Ovid, the Roman poet, makes reference to Sisyphus in the story ofOrpheus and Eurydice. When Orpheus descends and confronts Hades and Persephone, he sings a song so that they will grant his wish to bring Eurydice back from the dead. After this song is sung, Ovid shows how moving it was by noting that Sisyphus, emotionally affected for just a moment, stops his eternal task and sits on his rock, the Latin wording beinginque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo ("and you sat, Sisyphus, on your rock").[29]
InPlato'sApology, Socrates looks forward to the after-life where he can meet figures such as Sisyphus, who think themselves wise, so that he can question them and find who is wise and who "thinks he is when he is not."[30]
Franz Kafka repeatedly referred to Sisyphus as a bachelor;Kafkaesque for him were those qualities that brought out the Sisyphus-like qualities in himself. According to Frederick Karl: "The man who struggled to reach the heights only to be thrown down to the depths embodied all of Kafka's aspirations; and he remained himself, alone, solitary."[31]
The philosopherRichard Clyde Taylor uses the myth of Sisyphus as a representation of a life made meaningless because it consists of bare repetition.[32]
Hollis Robbins, reading Ovid against Camus, proposes that the punishment was not a punishment but a recognition and making legible of Sisyphus's essential nature: his compulsion to push against the rules.[34]
Hard, Robin,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004.ISBN978-0-415-18636-0.Google Books.
Pausanias,Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
