Sisyphus

Persephone supervising Sisyphus in the Underworld, Attica black-figure amphora (vase), ca. 530 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen museum (Inv. 1494)

In Greek mythology Sisyphus (pronounced /ˈsɪsəfəs/; Greek: Σίσυφος sísypʰos [ˈsisifos]  ( listen)) was a king punished by being compelled to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity. He is also found in Roman mythology.

The word sisyphean means, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, "endless and unavailing, as labor or a task."

Myth

Sisyphus was son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, and the founder and first king of Ephyra (Corinth). He was the father of Glaucus by the nymph Merope, and the grandfather of Bellerophon.

Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce, but was avaricious and deceitful, violating the laws of hospitality by killing travelers and guests. He took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his dominant position. From Homer onwards, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. He seduced his niece, took his brother's throne and betrayed Zeus' secrets. Zeus then ordered Thanatos (Death personified) to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked. When Thanatos did so, Sisyphus secured them and threatened him. This caused an uproar since no human could die with Thanatos out of commission. Eventually Ares (who was annoyed that his battles had lost their fun because his opponents would not die) intervened, freeing Death and sending Sisyphus to Tartarus.

However, before Sisyphus died, 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). Then, complaining to Persephone that this was a sign of his wife's disrespect for him, Sisyphus persuaded her to allow him to go back to the upper world and scold his wife for not burying his body (as a loving wife should). Back in Corinth, Sisyphus refused to return to the underworld and had to be forcibly dragged back by Hermes.

In another version of the myth, Persephone was directly persuaded that he had been conducted to Tartarus by mistake and ordered him to be freed.^[1]

"Sisyphean task" or "Sisyphean challenge"

As a punishment from the gods for his trickery, Sisyphus was made to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he could reach the top of the hill, the rock would always roll back down, forcing him to begin again.^[2] The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus. Sisyphus took the bold step of reporting one of Zeus' sexual conquests, telling the river god Asopus of the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina. Zeus had taken her away, but regardless of the impropriety of Zeus' frequent conquests, Sisyphus overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could rightfully report their indiscretions.^[3] As a result, Zeus displayed his own cleverness by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration. Accordingly, pointless or interminable activities are often described as Sisyphean. Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi.^[4]

Interpretations

According to the solar theory, Sisyphus is the disk of the sun that rises every day in the east and then sinks into the west.^[5] Other scholars regard him as a personification of waves rising and falling, or of the treacherous sea.^[5] The 1st-century BC Epicurean philosopher Lucretius 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.^[6] Friedrich Welcker suggested that he symbolises the vain struggle of man in the pursuit of knowledge, and Salomon Reinach^[7] that his punishment is based on a picture in which Sisyphus was represented rolling a huge stone Acrocorinthus, symbolic of the labour and skill involved in the building of the Sisypheum. Albert Camus, in his 1942 essay The 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."

Literary interpretations

Ovid, the famous Roman poet, makes reference to Sisyphus in the story of Orpheus 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 being inque tuo sedisti Sisyphe, saxo.^[8]

Albert Camus, the French absurdist, wrote an essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus in which he elevates Sisyphus to the status of absurd hero.

Franz Kafka repeatedly referred to Sisyphus as a bachelor; the 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."^[9]

The philosopher Richard Taylor uses the myth of Sisyphus as a representation of a life made meaningless because it consists of bare repetition.^[10]

A radio play A View From The Mountain written by Don Haworth broadcast in 1987 on BBC Radio 4 starring Michael Williams and Judi Dench revisited the Sisyphus myth.

Sisyphus in culture

• Finnish composer Jouni Kaipainen's Sisyphus Dreams
• In 1972, Swiss astronomer Paul Wild discovered the largest Earth-crossing asteroid, which was named 1866 Sisyphus.
• Stone of Sisyphus is a previously unreleased album by the rock band Chicago.
• Though purported to be one of the dialogues of Greek philosopher Plato, Sisyphus is generally believed to be apocryphal, possibly written by one of his pupils.
• "Sysyphus" is an instrumental, four-part suite written by Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright for the rock band's 1969 album Ummagumma.
• "Carve Away the Stone" is a song by rock band Rush from their 1996 album Test for Echo.
• In the 1968 science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, much of human society operates under an empathy-based belief system called Mercerism. Its origins come from the story of a man named Wilbur Mercer, which is arguably an homage to Sisyphus.
• In the manga Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, published by the Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine, the Sagittarius Gold Saint of the goddess Athena's army is known as Sisyphos.
• On the Rocks by Ken Boesem is a short "comix noir" adaptation of the myth, recasting Sisyphus as a young factory worker in the 1940s.
• In the 2009 film Triangle, the lead character is punished in Sisyphean fashion for cheating Death by being forced to endure a time loop.
• In the four-part "Beyond Good and Evil" episode from the 1992-1997 animated X-Men television series, the villain Apocalypse makes reference to Sisyphus in relation to not being able to defeat either mankind or mutantkind.
• The Children of Sisyphus is a novel by Orlando Patterson set in a Jamaican ghetto about characters who struggle to come to grips with the absurdity of life.
• The song "Enjoy the Struggle" taken from Irish rock band Therapy?'s album Crooked Timber starts with the line "poor old Sisyphus, poor old us"
• In the animated series Ulysses 31, Sisyphus is a king condemned to fill a crater with boulders for eternity for daring to want the secret of immortality.
• In Soldier of Arete The protagonist Latro encounters Sisyphus while in the underworld. Helping him roll the boulder up the hill he frees Sisyphus.

See also

• 1866 Sisyphus, asteroid
• Naranath Bhranthan, a similar character in Indian folklore
• Tantalus
• The Myth of Sisyphus, a philosophical essay by Albert Camus
• Wu Gang

References

External links

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Sisyphus". Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.