Question- Provide a summary of the myth of Sisyphus.

Answer -

The poster-boy of existentialism, Sisyphus has become associated with laborious and pointless tasks, because he was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only for the boulder to roll back down to the bottom just as he was about to complete the task. He was this doomed to repeat this action forever.

However, there's a lot more to the story of Sisyphus than this snapshot. Although he's best known now for rolling a stone up a hill, Sisyphus did lots before he was doomed to repeat that (literal) uphill struggle. He was the mythical founder of the city-state of Corinth (called Ephyra at the time) and was the viewed as the successor to Media - she of the doomed relationship with Jason, of Argonauts fame. He was also credited with founding the Isthmian games, which were hold both the year before and the year after the Olympic games (the second and fourth years of an Olympiad), from around 582 BC (nearly two centuries after the first Olympic games were hold).

Sisyphus is credited with siring, among others, Glaucers, Bellerophon, and even in one version - wily Odysseus himself. The story goes that Autolycus has stolen Sisyphus's flock but Sisyphus, viewed by many as the most cunning of all men, had taken the precaution of branding his name onto his animals, so he could prove the stolen flock was his. Autolycus's daughter Anticleia was due to marry Laertes the next day after this thwarted act of farmyard theft took place, and Sisyphus, to get his revenge, slipped into Anticleia's bed the night before her wedding and seduced her. She conceived Odysseus as a result.

But because Autolycus was impressed by Sisyphus's cleverness, he happily gave his daughter to Sisyphus, because he wanted to have a wily and quite thinking grandson. Odysseus certainly grew up to be just that, as Homer's Odyssey attests. Laertes, in this version of the Odysseus' story, wasn't Odysseus's biological father then.

But how did Sisyphus end up being condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, for all eternity? That, too, depends or which version of the myth we read.

For instance, according to one account, Sisyphus ended up rolling that rock uphill because he snitched on Zeus during one of the god's various acts of abduction involving young and beautiful women. When Zeus made off with Aegina, Sisyphus saw him. Aegina's father, Asopus found that Sisyphus had witnessed it and he asked Sisyphus to tell him who had taken his daughter. Sisyphus, ever the wily man, made him a deal he'd told Asopus who had made off with his daughter if Asopus made a spring gush onto the citadel of Corinth. Asopus agreed to this, and Sisyphus dropped Zeus right in it.

Zeus, who short temper was as legendary as his penchant for running off with maidens, wasn't too happy about Sisyphus dobbing him in like this, so he stuck Sisyphus down with a thunderbolt. Transported to the underworld, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity.

Homer, however, tells the story quite differently. Here, Sisyphus's crime was refusing to die when the gods decreed it. So, Zeus sent Thanatos, the spirit of Death, to carry the stubborn Sisyphus off to the underworld. But Zeus had underestimated how wily Sisyphus was, and Sisyphus was waiting for Thanatos when he arrived, claimed up this deathly agent, and in doing so, suspended death across all of the world. With Thanatos in captivity, nobody- including Sisyphus himself could die. But one cannot cheat death forever, and Sisyphus was forced, by Zeus, to unchain Thanatos so that the daily business of death could resume. Unfortunately, for Sisyphus, his name was first on the list. But once again, Sisyphus tricked his way out of it. He hatched a plan with. his wife, telling her that when they carried him off to the underworld, she shouldn't observe the funeral its usually accorded to a dead person. When Sisyphus arrived before Hades in the underworld, he complained that his wife go back had refused to honors him when he died, and Hades agreed to let him and chastise his rude widow. The tick worked, and Sisyphus somehow got away with living for many more years.

When he did eventually die, the God made sure he couldn't trick his way out of the underworld again, by setting him the endless task with which he is now so closely associated rolling that marine rock forever by a hill, only to find when he reached the top of the hill that the rock rolled all the way back down to the bottom and he had to start all over again.

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