The most complete account of this myth comes from a summary of the story as it would have been told in the lost writings of Pherecydes, a genealogist and mythographer of the fifth century BCE.Īccording to Pherecydes, it all started when Sisyphus revealed to the river god Asopus that he had seen Zeus carrying off Aegina, Asopus’ daughter. In what has become the most familiar tradition, Sisyphus was punished because he cheated Death. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany.īut there were different accounts of the crime that so memorably provoked the gods’ wrath. Īttic black-figure amphora showing the punishment of Sisyphus in the Underworld. But he would strain again and thrust it back, and the sweat flowed down from his limbs, and dust rose up from his head. Verily he would brace himself with hands and feet, and thrust the stone toward the crest of a hill, but as often as he was about to heave it over the top, the weight would turn it back, and then down again to the plain would come rolling the ruthless stone. In the Odyssey, Odysseus describes seeing Sisyphus pushing his stone in the Underworld: In antiquity (as is still the case today), Sisyphus served as a cautionary tale for the terrible consequences of offending the gods. Crime and Punishment: Three Versions of Sisyphus But in other traditions, Medea made Sisyphus king of Corinth after she killed the city’s royal family. He was sometimes said to have actually founded the city. Sisyphus was usually described as the king of Ephyra (the original name of Corinth). In some traditions, however, Sisyphus’ siblings shared their names with Greek cities and towns, including Mimas, Tanagra, and Arne -which, according to local myths, had been named after them. His sisters included Canace, Alcyone, Pisidice, Calyce, and Perimede. His brothers included Cretheus, Athamas, Salmoneus, and Perieres, as well as Deion and Magnes (in some sources). Sisyphus was the son of Aeolus, an early king of Thessaly, and his queen Enarete. In ancient art, Sisyphus was most commonly represented with his stone in Tartarus. In the end, his most famous attribute was not an aspect of his personality at all but rather the punishment for which he will always be remembered: the huge stone that he was forced to roll up a hill in Tartarus for all eternity. ![]() In the Iliad, he is described as the “craftiest of men,” while the poet Pindar wrote that he was “like a god…very shrewd in his devising.” īut Sisyphus also had a tendency to overstep his mortal bounds and offend the gods, which caused him no end of trouble. Sisyphus’ chief personal attribute was his cunning. But Sisyphus’ most common epithets evoked his craftiness through such Greek words as kerdiōn and aiolomētēs (meaning simply “crafty”). ![]() He was sometimes referred to as “Aeolides,” meaning “son of Aeolus”-a reference to his father, the Thessalian king Aeolus. Sisyphus only appears occasionally in surviving ancient literature and therefore only has a few epithets. More recently, other scholars have suggested some connection with the Greek word sophos, meaning “clever” or “wise.” Pronunciation ![]() In 1906, German scholar Otto Gruppe suggested that it was derived from the Greek word sisys, meaning “goatskin”-a reference, supposedly, to a rain-charm that employed goatskins. The etymology of the name “Sisyphus” (Greek Σίσυφος, translit.
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