Who is Sisyphus?
Sisyphus was king of Ephyra; a human character from Greek mythology. According to legend, he was deceitful, greedy, and murderous. After his death, Zeus (king of the Greek gods) sent him to Tartarus—the Greek version of hell.
In Tartarus, Sisyphus was sentenced to eternal punishment for his wickedness. He had to push a giant boulder up a hill, but every time the boulder got close to the top, it rolled back down, forcing him to start all over again. In modern-day English, the word Sisyphean describes a task that’s never-ending, pointless, or both.
Green, Tom, Khan Academy, Sports, challenges, and punishments in ancient Greek culture.
Sisyphus
The tortured, straining Sisyphus
Upon a rutted hill in hell
Can curse the gods that cursed him thus
But cannot break the binding spell.
His bootless labor without end
Can only make the rock descend.
But how this kingly mortal sneers
And spits upon the trampled soil.
He grants no vengeful god his fears
Nor calls condemned his ceaseless toil;
He battles demon rock and hill
Because he thinks to win by will.
Richard Meyer
Mankato, Minnesota
Sisyphus Decides
Sisyphus decides—why not— to let go of the stone he's been rolling up a hill for what seems like forever.
He falls back, onto the long grass, noticing the deep groove his stone has made in the hillside, remembers
how he would always get so far and then it would somehow slip his grasp, start rolling back the way it came, to wait for him at the bottom of the hill.
Now it tumbles over a field he's never seen before, getting smaller, disappearing into the blur of distance.
He knows this is hell he's in, no doubt of it with all the treasure here, the brightness dragged down from the upper world and
spread out like scattered flowers and all the people, doomed to torment, misery,
the loss of everything they've ever loved but still looking, for the moment, almost cheerful.
Ciarân Parkes
Spencer, Andrew, and Timothy L. Gall. “Sisyphus.” Mythology Online, Lincoln Library Press, 2012. FactCite, https://www.factcite.com/myth/8000444.html. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
"Sisyphus." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 15 May. 2020. school.eb.com/levels/high/article/Sisyphus/68010. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
The Deaths of Sisyphus: Structural Analysis of a Classical Myth
Raffalovich, Daniel C. “The Deaths of Sisyphus: Structural Analysis of a Classical Myth.” Anthropologica, vol. 30, no. 1, 1988, pp. 87–93. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25605249. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.
Pleading for Hell: Postulates, Fantasies, and the Senselessness of Punishment
Burkert, Walter. “Pleading for Hell: Postulates, Fantasies, and the Senselessness of Punishment.” Numen, vol. 56, no. 2/3, 2009, pp. 141–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27793787. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.
SISYPHUS ROLLING STONE. - Sisyphus condemned by Zeus to the everlasting task of trying to roll a huge stone to the top of a mountain. Color engraving, early 18th century.
Fine Art. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/140_1633821/1/140_1633821/cite. Accessed 12 Dec 2022.
Sisyphus; headless male statue, part of the monument of the Thessalians, in the Museum of Delphi, in Greece.
Photography. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/153_2364501/1/153_2364501/cite. Accessed 12 Dec 2022.