Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Tantalus.
The gallery
Tantalus
Gioacchino Assereto, c. 1640s
Assereto's Genoese canvas shows the Pelopid king reaching for fruit and water that forever recede — the underworld feast that made his name a verb for torment just out of reach.
Tantalus
Hendrick Goltzius, after Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, 1588
From The Four Disgracers: Goltzius engraves Tantalus hurtling through empty air — the king who served his son to the gods, falling toward the hunger and thirst that await him below.
Tantalus
Attributed to Giovanni Battista Langetti, 17th century
A Venetian tenebrist treatment of the standing sinner: Tantalus half-submerged, straining toward what he cannot grasp — the classic Tartarean punishment of the feast denied.
Tantalus
Manner of Jusepe de Ribera, 17th century
A Prado canvas in Ribera's manner keeps the lost Furia alive: the underworld king twisted in shadow, still reaching for the water and fruit that slip away — Tantalus as Spanish Baroque torment.
In play
Tantalize
English tantalize means to torment with what stays just out of reach — the Pelopid king's underworld feast turned into an everyday verb.
Tantalum
The element tantalum was named for Tantalus — a metal that, like his water and fruit, resists being taken, hard to extract from its ore.
House of Atreus
The Atreid curse begins with Tantalus' crime against the gods — the Pelopid feast that seeds Agamemnon's house and the Oresteia's inherited blood-guilt.