Greek Mortal

Sisyphus

Overview

Sisyphus was a Greek king usually associated with Corinth. He was famously cunning, but unfortunately also deceitful and impious. In the most common version of the myth, Sisyphus managed to cheat Death and thereby extend his life (the details of how he accomplished this vary across different sources). 

Eventually, however, Sisyphus did die. For acting against the will of the gods, Sisyphus received a terrible punishment in the afterlife: he was sent to Tartarus, roughly the Greek equivalent of hell, where he was forced to roll a giant boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down once he reached the top. Sisyphus was thus forced to endlessly repeat the same grueling task for all eternity.

Etymology

The etymology of the name “Sisyphus” (Greek Σίσυφος, translit. Sisyphos) is uncertain. 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.[1] More recently, other scholars have suggested some connection with the Greek word sophos, meaning “clever” or “wise.”[2]

Pronunciation

  • English
    Greek
    SisyphusΣίσυφος (translit. Sisyphos)
  • Phonetic
    IPA
    [SIS-uh-fuhs]/ˈsɪs ə fəs/

Titles and Epithets

Sisyphus only appears occasionally in surviving ancient literature and therefore only has a few epithets. He was sometimes referred to as “Aeolides,” meaning “son of Aeolus”—a reference to his father, the Thessalian king Aeolus. But Sisyphus’ most common epithets evoked his craftiness through such Greek words as kerdiōn and aiolomētēs (meaning simply “crafty”).

Attributes and Iconography

Sisyphus’ chief personal attribute was his cunning. In the Iliad, he is described as the “craftiest of men,”[3] while the poet Pindar wrote that he was “like a god…very shrewd in his devising.”[4]

But Sisyphus also had a tendency to overstep his mortal bounds and offend the gods, which caused him no end of trouble. 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 ancient art, Sisyphus was most commonly represented with his stone in Tartarus.[5]

Family

Sisyphus was the son of Aeolus, an early king of Thessaly, and his queen Enarete. His brothers included Cretheus, Athamas, Salmoneus, and Perieres,[6] as well as Deion and Magnes (in some sources).[7] His sisters included Canace, Alcyone, Pisidice, Calyce, and Perimede. In some traditions, however, Sisyphus’ siblings shared their names with Greek cities and towns, including Mimas,[8] Tanagra,[9] and Arne[10]—which, according to local myths, had been named after them. 

Family Tree

  • Parents
    Father
    Mother
    • Aeolus (son of Hellen)
    • Enarete
  • Siblings
    Brothers
    Sisters
    • Athamas
    • Cretheus
    • Deion
    • Magnes
    • Perieres
    • Salmoneus
    • Alcyone
    • Canace
    • Calyce
    • Perimide
    • Pisidice
  • Consorts
    Wife
    Lovers
    • Merope
  • Children
    Sons

Mythology

King of Corinth

Sisyphus was usually described as the king of Ephyra (the original name of Corinth).[15] He was sometimes said to have actually founded the city.[16] But in other traditions, Medea made Sisyphus king of Corinth after she killed the city’s royal family.[17]

Crime and Punishment: Three Versions of Sisyphus

In antiquity (as is still the case today), Sisyphus served as a cautionary tale for the terrible consequences of offending the gods. In the Odyssey, Odysseus describes seeing Sisyphus pushing his stone in the Underworld:

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. But he would strain again and thrust it back, and the sweat flowed down from his limbs, and dust rose up from his head.[18]

Attic Black Figured amphora depicting the punishment of Sisyphus in Hades Staatliche Antikensammlungen Munich

Attic black-figure amphora showing the punishment of Sisyphus in the Underworld. Attributed to the Acheloos Painter (ca. 525–500 BCE). Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany.

Carole RaddatoCC BY-SA 2.0

But there were different accounts of the crime that so memorably provoked the gods’ wrath.

Two Ways to Cheat Death

In what has become the most familiar tradition, Sisyphus was punished because he cheated Death. 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. 

According to Pherecydes, it all started when Sisyphus revealed to the river god Asopus that he had seen Zeus carrying off Aegina, Asopus’ daughter. In revenge, Zeus sent Death to take Sisyphus to the Underworld. But Sisyphus managed to chain Death. Because of this, all humans (not just Sisyphus) were temporarily spared from death—at least until Zeus sent Ares to set things right.

After Death had been freed, he seized Sisyphus and took him to the Underworld—but not before Sisyphus instructed his wife Merope not to perform the customary funerary rituals for him. When Sisyphus reached the Underworld, he convinced Hades (or Hades’ queen Persephone, in some versions) to let him return to the world of the living to punish his wife for neglecting his funeral. Once back, of course, he did not return to the Underworld. 

Eventually, however, Sisyphus died of old age. Once he was back in the Underworld for good, the gods punished his all-too-brief victory over death by forcing him to forever push a stone up a hill.[19]

Asopus, Aegina, and Zeus

Several well-known authors—among them the geographer Pausanias and the mythographer Apollodorus—simplified the myth of Sisyphus by excluding his attempts to cheat Death. As in Pherecydes’ account, Sisyphus told Asopus that Zeus had carried off Aegina. In exchange for this information, some said, Sisyphus was given a spring on the Acrocorinth. But the gift, however grand, was little consolation in the end: in this version, Sisyphus received his eternal punishment solely for betraying Zeus’ secret.[20]

This myth follows a pattern seen elsewhere in Greek mythology, in which a god disproportionately punishes someone for revealing their secrets. Other examples include Battus, transformed into a stone by Hermes after he disclosed that the infant god had stolen Apollo’s cattle, or Ascalaphus, buried alive by Demeter after he testified that Persephone had tasted food in the Underworld (which forced her to forever remain Hades’ wife). The version of Sisyphus described by Pausanias and Apollodorus thus joins the ranks of other ill-fated mythological tattletales.

Sibling Rivalry: Sisyphus vs. Salmoneus

In another tradition, recorded by the Roman mythographer known as Hyginus,[21] Sisyphus was locked in a bitter conflict with his brother Salmoneus. The hatred between them was so deep that Sisyphus went to the oracle of Delphi to learn how he might kill Salmoneus. The oracle told him that if he had children with Salmoneus’ wife Tyro, they would do the deed for him.

Sisyphus followed the oracle’s advice and bore two sons with Tyro. But when Tyro learned the prophecy, she killed the children. Tantalizingly, the text breaks off precisely where it would have described what Sisyphus did next: presumably, he took a cruel revenge on Tyro. Whatever the exact details, Sisyphus’ actions were apparently savage enough to earn him his famous punishment.[22]

Other Myths

Sisyphus features in a handful of other myths.

In some traditions, Sisyphus was tangentially involved in the sad myth of Ino. After Hera drove Ino mad enough to drown herself and her son Melicertes, Sisyphus found Melicertes’ body washed up on the shore of Corinth. He buried the body and founded the Isthmian Games, athletic and artistic contests held every two years in honor of the boy.[23]

Another myth pitted Sisyphus against Autolycus, also a famous mythological trickster. Autolycus, a son of Hermes, was a skillful thief—almost impossible to catch. But Sisyphus found a way to outsmart him. Autolycus stole from Sisyphus’ herd, and true to form, he disguised the crime almost perfectly, slipping the animals away undetected and even changing their appearance. But Sisyphus had marked the bottoms of his animals’ hooves and so was able to prove Autolycus’ crime.[24]

Pop Culture

The most well-known modern adaptation of Sisyphus is Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), an essay on the philosophy of the absurd.

Sisyphus has also appeared in cinema and television, including the 1990s television series Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. More recently, Sisyphus inspired the Korean series Sisyphus: The Myth (2021).

References

Notes

  1. Otto Gruppe, Griechische mythologie und religionsgeschichte (Munich: Beck, 1906), 1021.

  2. Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 1374. This is mentioned under the entry for σοφός (“sophos”); note that the entry for Σίσυφος (“Sisyphus”), to which Beekes alludes, is missing.

  3. Homer, Iliad 6.153, trans. A. T. Murray.

  4. Pindar, Olympian 13.52, trans. Diane Arson Svarlien.

  5. See John H. Oakley, “Sisyphos I,” in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich: Artemis, 1994), 8:781–87.

  6. Hesiod, Catalogue of Women frag. 10 M-W.

  7. These two are included in the list given in Apollodorus, Library 1.7.3.

  8. Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History 4.67.2ff.

  9. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.20.1.

  10. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.40.5.

  11. Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.4.3.

  12. Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica 3.1553.

  13. Aeschylus, frag. 175 TrGF; Sophocles, Philoctetes 1311; Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 524; Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.31; Hyginus, Fabulae 201; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid 6.529; etc. This myth generally comes up in contexts where Odysseus is being insulted.

  14. Scholia on Pindar’s Olympian 13.74. Sisyphus was also associated with Medea in other myths, such as the one in which Medea made him king of Corinth (Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.3.11).

  15. Homer, Iliad 6.152ff; Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.1.1; Apollodorus, Library 1.9.3; etc.

  16. Apollodorus, Library 1.9.3.

  17. Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.3.11.

  18. Homer, Odyssey 11.595–600, trans. A. T. Murray.

  19. Pherecydes, FHG 1 F 78. Cf. Alcaeus, frag. 38a.5ff Voigt; Theognis, Elegiac Poems 1.701–12; scholia on Homer’s Odyssey 11.593; scholia on Pindar’s Olympian 1.97. Note that Theognis only mentions one scheme (namely, Sisyphus’ ploy to persuade Persephone to let him return to the land of the living to punish Merope for neglecting his funeral), while Alcaeus mentions two escapes from the Underworld without specifying any details. The myth of Sisyphus was also the subject of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Critias, though these unfortunately have not survived; Aeschylus, at least, seems to have retold the myth in much the same way as Pherecydes (virtually nothing is known about the adaptations of the other playwrights).

  20. Apollodorus, Library 1.9.3, 3.12.6; Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.5.1.

  21. This name is probably specious.

  22. Hyginus, Fabulae 60.

  23. Pindar, frag. 5; Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.1.3; Apollodorus, Library 3.4.3; etc.

  24. Hyginus, Fabulae 201; Polyaenus, Stratagems 6.52.

Primary Sources

Though Sisyphus remains a well-known mythical figure, we have very few ancient texts that describe his myth. This is not to say that he was an unpopular literary subject; on the contrary, all three of the canonical Athenian tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—wrote plays about him. Unfortunately, none of these plays have survived. The extant works that do tell the myth of Sisyphus discuss him only in summary or through hard-to-interpret allusions.

Greek

  • Homer: Sisyphus and his punishment are mentioned in both the Iliad and the Odyssey (eighth century BCE); however, neither epic specifies Sisyphus’ crime. In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus actually glimpses Sisyphus in the Underworld.

  • Hesiod: There are references to Sisyphus and his genealogy in the fragmentary Catalogue of Women (seventh or sixth century BCE).

  • Theognis: A poem in the first book of Theognis’ elegies (sixth century BCE) briefly describes the myth of Sisyphus.

  • Pindar: Sisyphus’ exceptional cunning is described in Olympian Ode 13 (464 BCE).

  • Pausanias, Description of Greece: A second-century CE travelogue and an important source for local myths and customs. In Book 2 especially, Pausanias relates some traditions about Sisyphus.

Roman

  • Lucretius: In Book 3 of his poem On the Nature of Things (first century BCE), the philosopher Lucretius interprets the myth of Sisyphus as an allegory for politicians who constantly seek political office only to be defeated again and again.

  • Ovid: Sisyphus appears briefly in Book 10 of the epic Metamorphoses (ca. 8 CE): when Orpheus, seeking to restore his bride Eurydice to life, captivates the Underworld with his music, even Sisyphus stops rolling his stone up the hill for a moment.

Mythological Handbooks (Greek and Roman):

  • Apollodorus, Library: A mythological handbook from the first century BCE or the first few centuries CE that contains references to Sisyphus.

  • Hyginus, Fabulae: A Latin mythological handbook (first or second century CE) that includes sections on the myths of Sisyphus.

Secondary Sources

  • Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. 2 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

  • Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin, 1955.

  • Kerényi, Károly. The Heroes of the Greeks. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.

  • Nünlist, René. “Sisyphus.” In Brill’s New Pauly, edited by Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, Manfred Landfester, and Francis G. Gentry. Published online 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1114350.

  • Oakley, John H. “Sisyphos I.” In Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, vol. 8, 781–87. Zurich: Artemis, 1994.

  • Rose, H. J. A Handbook of Greek Mythology. London: Methuen, 1929.

  • Simon, Elliott M. The Myth of Sisyphus: Renaissance Theories of Human Perfectibility. Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007.

  • Smith, William. “Sisyphus.” In A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Spottiswoode and Company, 1873. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed August 10, 2021. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DS%3Aentry+group%3D19%3Aentry%3Dsisyphus-bio-1.

  • Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane. “Sisyphus.” In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed., edited by Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow, 1373. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Citation

Kapach, Avi. “Sisyphus.” Mythopedia, December 08, 2022. https://mythopedia.com/topics/sisyphus.

Kapach, Avi. “Sisyphus.” Mythopedia, 8 Dec. 2022. https://mythopedia.com/topics/sisyphus. Accessed on 24 Sep. 2024.

Kapach, A. (2022, December 8). Sisyphus. Mythopedia. https://mythopedia.com/topics/sisyphus

Authors

  • Avi Kapach

    Avi Kapach is a writer, scholar, and educator who received his PhD in Classics from Brown University

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