Sisyphus

Summary

Sisyphus is a king of Corinth in Greek myth, son of Aeolus, and "the craftiest of men", as Homer calls him. The Library ascribed to Apollodorus says he founded the city of Ephyra, which is Corinth, and married Merope, daughter of Atlas, who bore him Glaucus, father of Bellerophon who killed the Chimera.

His story is the story of a man who put off his death by his wits. Zeus carried off Aegina, daughter of the river Asopus, and Asopus came looking for her. Sisyphus knew who had taken her and refused to tell until Asopus gave him a spring on the citadel of Corinth; when he had the spring, he told. Pausanias 2.5.1. So Zeus sent Death, Thanatos, against him, and Sisyphus bound Death fast, so that people stopped dying, until Ares came, set Death free and handed Sisyphus over to him. Before he died he told his wife Merope not to make the offerings due to the dead. When he came down to the house of Hades he complained that his wife had neglected his due, and persuaded Hades to let him go back to life to take her to task. Once above, he refused to return, until Hermes fetched him back. So Pherecydes tells it, and the poet Theognis says that Sisyphus "came up even from Hades by his wits" after persuading Persephone with wily words, and that no one else has ever done it.

Odysseus saw him in torment on his visit to the spirits of the dead: he pushes a huge stone with hands and feet towards the crest of a hill, and each time he is about to heave it over the top its weight turns it back, and the pitiless stone rolls down to the plain; he strains to push it again, the sweat runs from his limbs, and dust rises from his head. The Library says he is punished this way for revealing Zeus's secret to Asopus.

The idea his story turns on is that cunning buys time but does not buy the ending. Sisyphus bound Death, and death was delayed; he promised the king of the dead to come back, and did not. When he was taken at last he was given time without end, and with it a task that is never finished: the stone reaches the top of the hill every time and never goes over. The poet Alcaeus says he thought himself master of Death, yet despite his cunning crossed the river Acheron twice.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Σίσυφος, Sisyphos, ends in -os, the nominative ending. The Greek lexicon keeps from Hesychius a word σέσυφος, "knave, cunning rogue", whose first syllable is σε- instead of σι-, so the first syllable varies while σύφ- stays. S is s, υ is a rounded vowel, and φ answers f. The Greek essay reads Sisyphus as "the eternal toiler" and offers words in which s and f repeat. We read the name, proposed on the method, from sawwafa: in Lane, sawwafahu is to say to someone time after time sawfa afʿal, "I will do it", and so to delay him and put him off with promises, and sāfa is said of a man who perished and died. On this reading Sisyphus is al-musawwif, "the one who keeps saying later", who delays and promises and does not keep his word, which is what the story makes him: the man who put off his death twice, bound Death, and promised the king of the dead to come back and did not, and was punished with a task that tells him every time: later.

Linguistic Root

Sisyphus and "the one who keeps saying later"

The Greek lexicon notes that his name became a byword for cunning: Theognis says "may you know more than Sisyphus", and Aristophanes speaks of "the devices of Sisyphus". The Greeks heard cunning in the name.

Lane: sawwafahu, to say to someone time after time sawfa afʿal, "I will do it", from the particle sawfa, and so to delay him and put him off, or to promise to keep one's word and not keep it. Sāfa, of a man or of cattle, is to perish and die, and suwāf is death falling among camels.

The sounds: s is s; w answers υ, a rounded vowel in Greek; and Arabic f answers f and p in the European languages, here φ. The first syllable σι- repeats the s, as the form σέσυφος in Hesychius suggests, where that syllable varies. This is the reading's own analysis; the Greek lexicon does not say it.

The essay's words

The essay reads Sisyphus as "the eternal toiler" and prefers ṣayṣafa, "he toiled and laboured", which we do not find in Lane or in the collected Arabic lexicons. It also gives safsafa, "to do with care and precision"; in Lane it is to sift flour, safsafa ʿamalahu is to do one's work imperfectly, and safsafat al-rīḥ is said when the wind raises fine dust. That last sense is close to Sisyphus's torment: work never finished, and dust rising from his head, as the Odyssey says. Safsafa and sawwafa share s and f. The essay also gives sayf, "sword", with an ending, "the sharp, the cutting", and saysaba, "to run, to flow", which we find only in saysabān, a tree.

Key Mythic Narratives

Sisyphus and Autolycus

Hyginus says that Autolycus, son of Hermes, was given the gift of stealing without being caught and of changing the colour and shape of whatever he stole. He kept stealing from Sisyphus's herd, and Sisyphus, seeing his own herd shrink while his neighbour's grew, put a mark under the hooves of his cattle. When Autolycus stole in his usual way, Sisyphus came, recognised his cattle by their hooves and took them back. While he was there he lay with Anticlea, daughter of Autolycus, who was afterwards married to Laertes and bore Odysseus, so that some writers call Odysseus the son of Sisyphus. Sophocles in the Philoctetes has him called "the offspring of Sisyphus that Laertes bought". Homer says that Autolycus, Odysseus's grandfather on his mother's side, excelled all men in thieving and in oaths, a gift from Hermes.

King of Corinth

Pausanias says that a dolphin brought ashore the body of the boy Melicertes, son of Sisyphus's brother Athamas, and that Sisyphus found him, buried him on the Isthmus and founded the Isthmian games in his honour. He reports from the Corinthian poet Eumelus that Medea, wife of Jason, was queen of Corinth, and that when Jason left her she handed the kingdom to Sisyphus. He adds that Sisyphus's grave is on the Isthmus and that few Corinthians knew where.

The stone rests once

When Orpheus sang in the house of the dead for his wife, Ovid says, Ixion's wheel stood still and Sisyphus sat down on his stone. The work that never stops stopped once, for a song.

Symbolic Reading

The project's Greek essay reads Sisyphus as "the eternal toiler", and in its reading saysaba it says that Sisyphus lifts the stone and it runs off him, that is, he works without result. The other essay, "Rereading Greek Myths", does not read him.

In the texts themselves Sisyphus does the work of a king who builds a city: he founded Corinth, got water for it from the river at a price, buried the drowned boy and founded games for him. With it goes the cunning of a man who bargains over everything, even death. When he was punished he was given a task like that of a builder who never reaches the end of his building.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Sisyphus bound Death and was then punished with a task without end. In the North the gods bound Loki after the trick that killed Baldr, and set over him a snake whose venom drips on his face until the end of time. The two cunning ones are punished with a torment that repeats without end, and both are witnesses of the trickster, whose cunning recoils on him.

His coming out of the house of Hades by talk, as Orpheus came out by song and Heracles by strength, is a witness of the descent to the underworld. He is the only one of them who came out by a trick, and was brought back.