Greek mythology · Heroes & mortals
Sisyphus, the cunning king condemned to the boulder
Sisyphus in Greek mythology: founding king of Corinth, master of trickery, twice conqueror of death, and eternally condemned to roll his boulder in Tartarus.
Sisyphus is, in Greek mythology, the embodiment of mortal cunning pushed all the way to open affront against the gods. Founding king of Corinth, he is famous for defeating death not once but twice — an audacity that earns him the most celebrated of eternal punishments: to push a boulder uphill forever, only to watch it roll back each time. His name has become a byword for absurd, endless effort.
King and founder of Corinth
Son of Aeolus, king of Thessaly, Sisyphus founds and rules the city of Ephyra, the future Corinth, one of the great commercial hubs of the Greek world. Tradition presents him as a shrewd but unscrupulous sovereign: he builds up trade and navigation, yet does not hesitate to kill travelers and betray his guests, violating the sacred laws of hospitality protected by Zeus.
His line is illustrious. Through his son Glaucus, Sisyphus is the grandfather of Bellerophon, the hero who tamed Pegasus and slew the Chimera. The cunning intelligence of the king of Corinth thus passes down into one of the greatest heroic figures of myth.
The man who informed on Zeus
The chain of Sisyphus’s transgressions begins with an act of betrayal against the lord of Olympus himself. When Zeus abducts the nymph Aegina, daughter of the river-god Asopus, Sisyphus witnesses it. He reveals the abductor’s name to the grieving father — in exchange, the story goes, for a spring of fresh water for his citadel of Corinth.
This betrayal seals his fate. Furious at being exposed, Zeus sends Thanatos, Death personified, to fetch Sisyphus and cast him into the Underworld. Here begins the cunning king’s duel against death itself.
Twice the conqueror of death
The first trick is spectacular. When Thanatos comes to chain him, Sisyphus feigns curiosity, asks to see how the shackles work — and turns the bonds against Death himself. With Thanatos captive, no mortal can die. The disorder grows so great that Ares, the war god robbed of his harvest of corpses, must intervene to free Thanatos and hand Sisyphus over at last.
The second trick is craftier still. Before dying, Sisyphus orders his wife Merope to give him no burial or funeral offerings. Once in the Underworld, he complains to Persephone about this impiety and wins permission to return briefly to the living to punish his neglectful wife. Back in the light, he simply refuses to return to the realm of shades. It takes Hermes himself, guide of souls, to drag him back down to Hades.
The boulder: a punishment tailored to the crime
To punish this stubborn defiance of the natural order, the gods reserve for Sisyphus an eternal torment in the depths of Tartarus. He must roll an enormous boulder to the top of a hill; but each time the stone reaches the crest, it rolls back down, and Sisyphus must begin all over again, forever.
The punishment is cruelly precise. The man who tried to escape death — that is, the end, the completion of all things — is condemned to a task that never ends. His cunning had allowed him to suspend the natural course of things; his sentence condemns him to an effort that never produces any result. It is the perfect negation of the practical intelligence that was his pride.
What the ancient sources say
Sisyphus appears as early as Homer’s Odyssey (Book XI), where Odysseus, descended to the Underworld, sees him laboring, drenched in sweat, endlessly heaving up the boulder that crashes back down. This Homeric image fixes the iconography of the torment forever.
Later mythographers, such as Apollodorus and the scholiasts, develop the episodes of the chained Death and the deceitful return. Some traditions even make Sisyphus the true father of Odysseus — whom he is said to have begotten by seducing Anticleia before her marriage to Laertes — which would explain the legendary guile of the hero of the Odyssey. This alternative parentage links two of the shrewdest minds in Greek mythology.
The myth of Sisyphus today
No ancient figure has enjoyed a more vivid philosophical afterlife. In the twentieth century, Albert Camus made the boulder of Sisyphus the emblem of the human condition confronting the absurd: an effort without end, in a world stripped of given meaning. His formula remains famous: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” The punished hero becomes, in Camus’s hands, a figure of lucidity and revolt.
The adjective “Sisyphean” now describes any endless and futile task. Few Greek myths have crossed the centuries so completely as to become a universal concept.
Ancient sources: Homer, Odyssey (XI, 593–600); Theognis; Apollodorus, Library (I, 9; III, 12); Pausanias, Description of Greece (II); Ovid, Metamorphoses (IV).
Frequently asked questions
Why is Sisyphus condemned to push a boulder?
Sisyphus is punished for repeatedly defying death and flouting divine order: he chained Thanatos (Death), then tricked Hades and Persephone into letting him return to the living. The gods condemn him to roll a boulder to the top of a hill in Tartarus forever; each time he nears the summit, the stone rolls back down, and he must begin again.
How did Sisyphus cheat death?
In the tradition, Sisyphus chains Thanatos when Death comes for him, so that no mortal can die until Ares frees him. Condemned a second time, he orders his wife not to bury him, then persuades Hades and Persephone to let him return to punish her impiety — and then refuses to go back. Hermes has to drag him down to the Underworld by force.
What is the connection between Sisyphus and Bellerophon?
Sisyphus is the grandfather of the hero Bellerophon: through his son Glaucus, king of Corinth, he is the ancestor of the rider of Pegasus. The Corinthian line of Sisyphus, marked by daring and intelligence, thus continues in the exploits of one of Greek mythology's greatest heroes.