Sisyphus

SISYPHUS, son of Aeolus, married Atlas’s daughter Merope, the Pleiad, who bore him Glaucus, Ornytion, and Sinon, and owned a fine herd of cattle on the Isthmus of Corinth.
b. Near him lived Autolycus, son of Chione, whose twin-brother Philammon was begotten by Apollo, though Autolycus himself claimed Hermes as his father.
c. Now, Autolycus was a past master in theft, Hermes having given him the power of metamorphosing whatever beasts he stole, from horned to unhorned, or from black to white, and contrariwise. Thus although Sisyphus noticed that his own herds grew steadily smaller while those of Autolycus increased, he was unable at first to accuse him of theft; and therefore, one day, engraved the inside of all his cattle’s hooves with the monogram SS or, some say, with the words ‘Stolen by Autolycus’. That night Autolycus helped himself as usually and at dawn hoof-prints along the road provided Sisyphus with sufficient evidence to summon neighbours in witness of the theft. He visited Autolycus’s stable, recognized his stolen beasts by their marked hooves and, leaving his witnesses to remonstrate with the thief, hurried around the house, entered by the portal, and while the argument was in progress outside seduced Autolycus’s daughter Anticleia, wife to Laertes the Argive. She bore him Odysseus, the manner of whose conception is enough to account for the cunning he habitually showed, and for his nickname ‘Hypsipylon’.

d. Sisyphus founded Ephyra, afterwards known as Corinth, and peopled it with men sprung from mushrooms, unless it be true that Medea gave him the kingdom as a present. His contemporaries knew him as the worst knave on earth, granting only that he promoted Corinthian commerce and navigation.
e. When, on the death of Aeolus, Salmoneus usurped the Thessalian throne, Sisyphus, who was the rightful heir, consulted the Delphic Oracle and was told: ‘Sire children on your niece; they will avenge you!’ He therefore seduced Tyro, Salmoneus’s daughter, who, happening to discover that his motive was not love for her, but hatred of her father, killed the two sons she had borne him. Sisyphus then entered the market place of Larissa and produced the dead bodies, falsely accused Salmoneus of incest and murder; and had him expelled from Thessaly.
f. After Zeus’s abduction of Aegina, her father the River-god Asopus came to Corinth in search of her. Sisyphus knew well what had happened to Aegina but would not reveal anything unless Asopus undertook to supply the citadel of Corinth with a perennial spring. Asopus accordingly made the spring Peirene rise behind Aphrodite’s temple, where there are now images of the goddess, armed; of the Sun; and of Eros the Archer. Then Sisyphus told him all he knew.
g. Zeus, who had narrowly escaped Asopus’s vengeance, ordered his brother Hades to fetch Sisyphus down to Tartarus and punish him everlastingly for his betrayal of divine secrets. Yet Sisyphus would not be daunted: he cunningly put Hades himself in handcuffs by persuading him to demonstrate their use, and then quickly locking them. Thus Hades was kept a prisoner in Sisyphus’s house for some days-an impossible situation, because nobody could die, even men who had been beheaded or cut in pieces; until at last Ares, whose interests were threatened, came hurrying up, set him free, and delivered Sisyphus into his clutches.
h. Sisyphus, however, kept another trick in reserve. Before descending to Tartarus, he instructed his wife Merope not to bury him; and, on reaching the Palace of Hades went straight to Persephone, and told her that, as an unburied person, he had no right to be there but should have been left on the far side of the river Styx. ‘Let me return to the upper world,’ he pleaded, ‘arrange for my burial, and avenge neglect shown me. My presence here is most irregular. I will be back within three days.’ Persephone was deceived and granted his request, but as soon as Sisyphus found himself once again under the light of sun, he repudiated his promise to Persephone. Finally, Hermes called upon to fetch him back by force.
i. It may have been because he had injured Salmoneus, or because he had betrayed Zeus’s secret, or because he had always lived by robbery and often murdered unsuspecting travellers-some say that it Theseus who put an end to Sisyphus’s career, though this is not generally mentioned among Theseus’s Feats-at any rate, Sisyphus was given an exemplary punishment. The Judges of the Dead showed him a tall block of stone-identical in size with that into which Zeus had turned himself when fleeing from Asopus-and ordered him to roll  it until brow of a hill and topple it down the farther slope. He has never succeeded in doing so.
As soon as he has almost reached the summit, he is forced back by the weight of the shameless stone, which bounce the very bottom once more; where he wearily retrieves it and rolling begins all over again, though sweat bathes his limbs, and a cloud of rises above his head.

j. Merope, ashamed to find herself the only Pleiad with a husband in the Underworld- and a criminal too-deserted her six starry sisters from the night sky and has never been seen since. And as the whereabouts of Neleus’s tomb on the Corinthian Isthmus was a secret which Sisyphus refused to divulge even to Nestor, so the Corinthians are now equally reticent when asked for the whereabouts of Sisyphus’s own.

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1. ‘Sisyphus’, though the Greeks understood it to mean ‘very wise’, is spelled Sesephus by Hesychius, and is thought to be a Greek variant of Tesup, the Hittite Sun-god, identical with Atabyrius the Sun-god of Rhodes, whose sacred animal was a bull. Bronze statuettes and reliefs of this bull, dating from the fourteenth century BC, have been found, marked with a sceptre and two disks on the flank, and with a trefoil on the haunch. Raids on the Sun-god’s marked cattle are a commonplace in Greek myth: Odysseus’s companions made them, so also did Alcyoneus, and his contemporary, Heracles. But Autolycus’s use of magic in his theft from Sisyphus recalls the story of Jacob and Laban (Genesis). Jacob, like Autolycus, had the gift of turning cattle to whatever colour he wanted, and thus diminished Laban’s flocks. The cultural connection between Corinth and Canaan, which is shown in the myths of Nisus, Oedipus, Alcathous, and Melicertes, may be Hittite. Alcyoneus also came from Corinth.
2. Sisyphus’s ‘shameless stone’ was originally a sun-disk, and the hill up which he rolled it is the vault of Heaven; this made a familiar enough icon. The existence of a Corinthian Sun cult is well established: Helius and Aphrodite are said to have held the acropolis in succession, and shared a temple there (Pausanias). Moreover, Sisyphus is invariably placed next to Ixion in Tartarus, and Ixion’s fire-wheel is a symbol of the sun. This explains why the people of Ephyra sprang from mushrooms: mushrooms were the ritual tinder of Ixion’s fire-wheel, and the Sun-god demanded human burnt sacrifices to inaugurate his year. Anticleia’s seduction has been deduced perhaps from a picture showing Helius’s marriage to Aphrodite; and the mythographer’s hostility towards Sisyphus voices Hellenic disgust at the strategic planting of non-Hellenic settlements on the narrow isthmus separating the Peloponnese from Attica. His outwitting of Hades probably refers to a sacred king’s refusal to abdicate at the end of his reign. To judge from the sun-bull’s markings, he contrived to rule for two Great Years, represented by the sceptre and the sun-disks, and obtained the Triple-goddess’s assent, represented by the trefoil. Hypsipylon, Odysseus’s nickname, is the masculine form of Hypsipyle: a title, probably, of the Moon-goddess.
3. Sisyphus and Neleus were probably buried at strategic points on the Isthmus as a charm against invasion. A lacuna occurs in Hyginus’s account of Sisyphus’s revenge on Salmoneus; I hay supplied a passage which makes sense of the story.
4. Peirene, the spring on the citadel of Corinth where Bellerophon took Pegasus to drink, had no emanation and never failed. Peirene was also the name of a fountain outside the city gate, on the way from the market-place to Lechaeum, where Peirene (‘of the osiers’)-whom the mythographers describe as the daughter of Achelous, or of Oebalus; or of Asopus and Merope (Diodorus Siculus)-was said to have been turned into a spring when she wept for her son Cenchrias (‘spotted serpent’); whom Artemis had unwittingly killed. ‘Corinthian bronze’ took characteristic colour from being plunged red-hot into this spring.
5. One of the seven Pleiads disappeared in early Classical times, and her absence had to be explained.
6. A question remains: was the double-S really the monogram Sisyphus. The icon illustrating the myth probably showed him examining the tracks of the stolen sheep and cattle which, since they ‘parted hoof’, were formalized as C. This sign stood for SS in the earlier Greek script, and could also be read as the conjoined halves of the lunar month and all that these implied-waxing and waning, increase an decline, blessing and cursing. Beasts which ‘parted the hoof’ were self-dedicated to the Moon-they are the sacrifices ordained at the Moon Festivals in Leviticus-and the SS will therefore have referred to Selene the Moon, alias Aphrodite, rather than to Sisyphus, who as sun-king merely held her sacred herd in trust. The figure CC representing the full moon (as distinguished from O, representing the simple sun-disk) was marked on each flank of the sacred cow which directed Cadmus to the site of Thebes.