17 Facts About Sisyphus

Sisyphus was formerly a Thessalian prince as the son of King Aeolus of Aeolia and Enarete, daughter of Deimachus.

Sisyphus was the brother of Athamas, Salmoneus, Cretheus, Perieres, Deioneus, Magnes, Calyce, Canace, Alcyone, Pisidice and Perimede.

Sisyphus married the Pleiad Merope by whom he became the father of Ornytion, Glaucus, Thersander and Almus.

Sisyphus was the grandfather of Bellerophon through Glaucus, and Minyas, founder of Orchomenus, through Almus.

In other versions of the myth, Sisyphus was the true father of Odysseus by Anticleia instead of Laertes.

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King Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce but was avaricious and deceitful.

Sisyphus killed guests and travelers in his palace, a violation of guest-obligations, which fell under Zeus' domain, thus angering the god.

Sisyphus took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his iron-fisted rule.

Sisyphus seduced Salmoneus' daughter Tyro in one of his plots to kill Salmoneus only for Tyro to slay the children she bore him when she discovered that Sisyphus was planning on using them eventually to dethrone her father.

Sisyphus betrayed one of Zeus' secrets by revealing the whereabouts of the Asopid Aegina to her father, the river god Asopus, in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthian acropolis.

Sisyphus was curious as to why Charon, whose job it was to guide souls to the underworld, had not appeared on this occasion.

Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked.

Once back in Ephyra, the spirit of Sisyphus scolded his wife for not burying his body and giving it a proper funeral as a loving wife should.

When Sisyphus refused to return to the underworld, he was forcibly dragged back there by Hermes.

Sisyphus was a common subject for ancient writers and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi.

Friedrich Welcker suggested that he symbolises the vain struggle of man in the pursuit of knowledge, and Salomon Reinach that his punishment is based on a picture in which Sisyphus was represented rolling a huge stone Acrocorinthus, symbolic of the labour and skill involved in the building of the Sisypheum.

Every time Sisyphus reaches the top of the mountain, he breaks off a stone from the mountain and carries it down to the lowest point.