Sisyphus (Sisyphos) is the crafty founder and king of Ephyra (Corinth), son of Aeolus and Enarete. He betrayed Zeus by revealing the god's abduction of Aegina, twice cheated death, and for his hubris was condemned in the underworld to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down whenever it neared the summit — an endless labour that made "Sisyphean" a byword for futile repetition.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Sisyphus" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
Sisyphus was a Thessalian prince, son of King Aeolus of Aeolia and Enarete, and brother of Athamas, Salmoneus, Cretheus, and others of the Aeolid house. He married the Pleiad Merope and fathered Ornytion (or Porphyrion), Glaucus, Thersander, and Almus; through Glaucus he was grandfather of Bellerophon.
In some versions Minyas was his son rather than his grandson. A rival tradition makes him the true father of Odysseus by Anticleia, instead of Laertes — a claim kept separate from Homer's usual genealogy.
II.Reign at Corinth
He was the founder and first king of Ephyra, later identified with Corinth. Pausanias records that he founded the Isthmian Games in honour of Melicertes, whose body a dolphin brought ashore on the Isthmus; a Pindaric fragment instead has nymphs instruct him to found the Games for Melicertes.
From Homer onward he was famed as the craftiest of men. He and his brother Salmoneus hated each other; consulting Delphi on how to kill Salmoneus without ruin, he seduced Salmoneus's daughter Tyro as part of a plot, only for Tyro to slay their children when she learned he meant to use them against her father.
III.Cheating death
Sisyphus revealed to the river-god Asopus where Zeus had taken Asopus's daughter Aegina, in return for a spring on the Corinthian acropolis. Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain him in Tartarus, but Sisyphus trapped Death himself; while Thanatos was bound, no one on earth could die. Ares freed Death and handed Sisyphus over — in some versions Hades was the one chained, with the same cosmic deadlock until the gods forced a release.
Before dying he told his wife to leave his naked corpse unburied in the public square. In the underworld he complained of this disrespect and persuaded Hades or Persephone to let him return above to scold her; once restored to life he refused to go back, remaining until old age or Hermes dragged him down again.
IV.Punishment in the underworld
For his crimes Hades condemned him to roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill in Tartarus. The stone was enchanted to slip away before the summit, consigning him to eternity of useless effort — a punishment matched to his belief that his cleverness outstripped Zeus. Pointless or interminable tasks are still called Sisyphean.
He was a favourite subject for ancient writers and painters; Polygnotus depicted him on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi. Homer places him among the great sufferers Odysseus sees in the underworld; Ovid has him pause briefly on his rock when Orpheus's song moves even the damned.
V.Interpretations
Ancient and modern readers have allegoricised the myth variously: as the sun's daily rise and fall, as waves or the treacherous sea, as the vain struggle for knowledge, or — with Lucretius — as politicians forever defeated in the empty pursuit of office. Albert Camus's 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus made him the absurd hero whose struggle itself can fill a human heart: "one must imagine Sisyphus happy."