![]() ![]() And for this spirit, the gods condemned him to the most rote and eternally frustrating task in the afterlife. Descriptions of his mortal exploits indicate he was a clever man who was good to his kingdom, loved life and desired to remain on Earth for as long as possible. Yet Sisyphus had no intention of returning to the underworld once his task was complete, and he lived for many more years before Hades tracked him down and sentenced him to the stone. Because such an oversight was considered extremely impious in the Greek tradition, Sisyphus convinced Hades to let him go back to Earth to correct this error. When Ares, god of war, finally rescued Hades and Sisyphus perished, he asked his wife to forgo the traditional funeral rites. But Sisyphus tricked the god of the underworld and held him captive so that no mortal could die. Unfortunately, Zeus himself had absconded with Asopus’ daughter, and after Sisyphus led Asopus to her rescue, Zeus sent his brother Hades to bring Sisyphus to his death. The king of Corinth, Sisyphus once offered to help the river-god Asopus find his lost daughter in exchange for a spring of fresh water for his kingdom. But what kind of man was Sisyphus? What did he do to incur the gods’ wrath? Accounts differ.Īccording to Camus, Homer described Sisyphus as “the wisest and most prudent of mortals.” Other translations of The Iliad use “wiliest.” While the connotations of these two descriptions differ vastly, Sisyphus was at the very least intelligent. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” So begins existentialist philosopher Albert Camus’ famous essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. “The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.
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