Aeolid who founded Ephyra, which is now called Corinth; he married Merope, daughter of Atlas, and fathered Glaucus, and for betraying to the river Asopus the truth of Aegina's abduction he is punished in Hades, forever rolling a stone with his hands and head until it rolls back down again.1
In Apollodorus he stands among the seven sons whom Aeolus begat on Enarete — Cretheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmoneus, Deion, Magnes, and Perieres. He founded Ephyra, the city now called Corinth, married Merope, daughter of Atlas, and had by her a son Glaucus, whose own son Bellerophon would slay the fire-breathing Chimera.2
Apollodorus gives a reason for the stone. When Zeus carried off Aegina, daughter of the river Asopus, her father came in search of her to Corinth and learned from Sisyphus that the ravisher was Zeus; for this betrayal Sisyphus is punished in Hades, rolling a stone with his hands and his head and straining to heave it over a height, but as often as he thrusts it up it rolls back down again.3⚖
Homer tells the punishment without a cause. In the house of Hades Odysseus beholds Sisyphus in violent torment, bracing himself with hands and feet to thrust a monstrous stone toward a hill-crest; but each time he is about to heave it over the top, the weight turns it back, and the shameless stone comes rolling down to the plain, and again he toils to thrust it up, the sweat pouring from his limbs and the dust rising from his head. Why he suffers, the poet never says.4⚖
In the Iliad his cunning founds a dynasty rather than a torment. Glaucus the Lycian, naming his lineage to Diomedes, recalls a city, Ephyre, in the heart of horse-pasturing Argos, where dwelt Sisyphus, craftiest of men, Sisyphus son of Aeolus; and he begat a son Glaucus, and Glaucus begat peerless Bellerophon — so that the Corinthian trickster is grandfather to the rider of the Chimera-slaying line.5
Hyginus adds a darker link to the house of Ithaca: while Autolycus was delayed, Sisyphus seduced Anticleia before her marriage to Laertes, and some writers accordingly call Odysseus Sisyphean for his shrewdness — as if the craftiest of mortals had left his mark on the son of the thief's daughter.6⚖
Apollodorus says the Isthmian games were instituted by Sisyphus in honour of Melicertes after Ino's sea-leap. Pausanias fills out the manner: the boy was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, Sisyphus found him lying, gave him burial there, and established the games — the sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia would long celebrate the contest beside the crossing.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
