Greek mythology · 3 chapters

Sisyphus: The Man Who Cheated Death

He tricked death twice. The gods gave him eternity to push a boulder uphill.

Sisyphus of Corinth was the craftiest man who ever lived. Twice he cheated death: first, he told his wife not to perform burial rites so that he could argue to Persephone that he had unfinished business in the upper world, and was allowed to return. Second, he had chained Thanatos himself, so that no one could die until Ares freed the god of death. His crimes against the gods piled up: he exposed Zeus's abduction of Aegina to her father, and committed other acts of hubris. When he finally died, the gods sentenced him to roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus for eternity. Each time he nears the top, it rolls back down. The absurdity of his labor became, for modern philosophy, the image of human existence itself.