![]() ![]() ![]() According to the mythological work known as the "Library," falsely attributed to Apollodorus, Sisyphus was only a few generations away from Deucalion, the man sometimes called the Greek Noah, as he and his wife Pyrrha were the ones who survived when Zeus flooded the world and were responsible for repopulating humanity. Sisyphus came from a pretty notable family. Franz Kafka, the novelist so associated with stories of labyrinthine futility and absurdity that the term "Kafkaesque" refers to things with "a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality," saw some of that same energy within the story of Sisyphus, relating his own vain efforts of pursuing a domestic life and family to the frustrated king by saying "Sisyphus is a bachelor." Kafka recognized in Sisyphus the helpless feeling of perpetual and fruitless self-reliance. Rather, Merriam-Webster says that a Sisyphean task is one "requiring continual and often ineffective effort," much like the famed punishment of the crafty king who rolls his rock up the hill only for it to roll all the way back down. The actual origin of the name Sisyphus is unknown, but the Online Etymology Dictionary records that Greek lexicographers Liddell and Scott suggested that the name might be ultimately derived from the word sophos, meaning "wise" or "clever" (also the root of philosophy), hinting at Sisyphus’s mythological function as a man so crafty he could trick the gods other linguists suggest that this is just a folk etymology.Īt any rate, the name Sisyphus and the derived adjective Sisyphean don’t bear any connotation of craftiness in modern times. While the complete life story of Sisyphus is generally not well known to the average person, the name should ring a bell: he’s that guy that pushes that rock. Who was he? What did he do to get punished like that? And what can his story teach us about the human condition? What it means to be ‘Sisyphean’ One of these minor characters, however, is better known for what he does in death than anything he did in life: Sisyphus, arguably the most famous inhabitant of Tartarus, the gloomy region of the Underworld where sinners are eternally punished.īut while the image of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill only for it to roll back down again is well known, other facets of his life remain obscure. But among these major players are hundreds of minor characters, filling in the edges or just existing to tell us where a certain type of flower came from. Greek mythology has no shortage of larger-than-life heroes, including the Olympian gods like Zeus and Hera, heroic demigods like Heracles and Perseus, and terrifying monsters like Medusa and Cerberus. ![]()
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