Sisyphus

“ Amazed, I listened to this wonderful tale of toil and patience, extending over the greater part of half a century, and amazed, I looked down at the result of this labour of Sisyphus, the framents of brown dust—they could have been little else—which now, after thousands of years, had revealed secrets which Hugh said would set the world gaping. My knowledge of Egyptology and hieroglyphics had become somewhat rusty since the happy days when, sitting in the room in the fitful light of the fire, I used to hear from the dear old man's lips the wonders of Khefren and the mysteries of Queen Neit-akrit ”

“ He stands on the bank of a beautiful stream clear as crystal, or in the midst of the water, but when he attempts to quench his raging thirst it is impossible even to wet his lips. Sisyphus, once king of Corinth, and a great sinner, was condemned to roll a block of stone up a high mountain, but, soon as the top was reached, the huge stone, by some sudden impulse, rolled back to the plain, and with weary limbs he must continue the fruitless struggle. Ixion, also an insolent offender, is chained, hands and feet, to an ever revolving wheel and tortured without respite or hope of release. ”

“ The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. ”

“ The way in which Sisyphus cheated Death is not unique in folk-tales. Thus in a Venetian story the ingenious Beppo ties up Death in a bag and keeps him there for eighteen months; there is general rejoicing; nobody dies, and the doctors are in high feather. In a Sicilian story an innkeeper corks up Death in a bottle; so nobody dies for years, and the long white beards are a sight to see. ”

“ At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. ”

“ Sisyphus had never found any pleasure in life comparable to the delight of seeing his stone bound down-hill, and in so timing its rush as to inflict the greatest possible scare on any unwary shade who might be wandering below. He got so great and such varied amusement out of this that his labour had become the automatism of reflex action—which is, I understand, the name applied by men of science to all actions that are done without reflection. ”

“ Schol. ad Iliad. i. 180. Another legend about the amour of Sisyphus with Tyrô, is in Hygin. fab. 60, and about the manner in which he overreached even Hadês (Pherekydês ap. Schol. Iliad. vi. 153) . The stone rolled by Sisyphus in the under-world appears in Odyss. xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was given during the historical age to men of craft and stratagem, such as Derkyllidês (Xenoph. Hellenic. iii. 1, 8) . He passed for the real father of Odysseus, though Heyne (ad Apollodôr. i. 9, 3) treats this as another Sisyphus, whereby he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. ”

“ It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. “I conclude that all is well,” says Œdipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. ”

“ It lures you like a siren, coaxing with soft promises of prizes to be wrested from it: you shall be the favoured of the gods, and you become Sisyphus, rolling his stone eternally, day after day. Here are the things of life that you covet, they shall be yours, says the Street: and you are Tantalus, reaching out everlastingly, and grasping nothing, until your heart is parched within you. You shall be strong and mighty, it says, sapping your strength like Delilah, until you pull down the pillars of hope, and fall buried beneath the reckless ruins of your career. ”

“ There Ixion, murderer of his father-in-law, is racked upon the ever-turning wheel, and Tantalus, who slew his son, endures eternal hunger in sight of food and eternal fear from the stone ever ready to fall. There the daughters of Danaüs cease not to pour water into bottomless urns. There Sisyphus, who broke faith with the gods when they permitted him to return a little while to the upper world, evermore rolls up a steep hill a great stone that, falling back from the summit, crushes the wretch in its downward rush. ”

“ And as for this delicious fruit, one must live in a hot climate, like our present one, sufficiently to appreciate its refreshing gust. I would, my dear friends, you could only share my banquet.’
‘Your Majesty is very kind,’ replied Sisyphus, ‘but it seems to me that nothing in the world will ever induce me again to move. One must have toiled for ages to comprehend the rapturous sense of repose that now pervades my exhausted frame. ”

“ At present they seem to be in a very lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and Tantalus. For what can be imagined more tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where it is impossible it can ever exist? ”

“ Zeus struck him with one of his bolts and hurled him down to Tartarus.
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Sisyphus was in the same dreadful place. In the upper world he had been guilty of thefts both among men and the gods. In the very hour of his death he perpetrated an evil deed. He seized and bound Thanatos, the god of death, with brazen bands, and for a long time no one died on earth. The gods of the underworld sent to Zeus this message: “Behold Thanatos, who went to the upper world to bring Sisyphus here, has not returned. For several days no shade has entered our dark kingdom.” ”

“ They arrived at last, rescued Fatima, and put Bluebeard to death.—Charles Perrault, Contes (“La Barbe Bleue,” 1697) .
This is a Scandinavian tale taken from the Folks Sagas.
Sis ́yphos, in Latin Sisyphus, a king of Corinth, noted for his avarice and fraud. He was punished in the infernal regions by having to roll uphill a huge stone, which always rolled down again as soon as it reached the top. Sisyphos is a type of avarice, never satisfied. The avaricious man reaches the summit of his ambition, and no sooner does he so than he finds the object of his desire as far off as ever. ”

“ Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
Homer, Odyssey, xi. [Pope’s trans.] .
Sisyphus, in the Milesian tales, was doomed to die, but when Death came to him, the wily fellow contrived to fasten the unwelcome messenger in a chair, and then feasted him till old Spare-ribs grew as fat as a prize pig. In time, Pluto released Death, and Sisyphus was caught, but prayed that he might speak to his wife before he went to Hadês. The prayer was granted, and Sisyphus told his wife not to bury him, for though she might think him dead, he would not be really so. ”

“ And among them our advocates challenge the first place, nor is there any sort of people that please themselves like them: for while they daily roll Sisyphus his stone, and quote you a thousand cases, as it were, in a breath no matter how little to the purpose, and heap glosses upon glosses, and opinions on the neck of opinions, they bring it at last to this pass, that that study of all other seems the most difficult. Add to these our logicians and sophists, a generation of men more prattling than an echo and the worst of them able to outchat a hundred of the best picked gossips. ”

“ Of its antiquity there can be no doubt; and if we see, in the smith with his hammer, the god Thor, and in Death and the Devil, a clumsy monstrous giant, the whole gains a well-based antique Norse aspect. We find references to it among the Greeks also, where the crafty smith is the cunning Sisyphus in a story which has been preserved by old Pherekydes, and which must have been known to the singer of the Iliad. Zeus, angry with the aged Sisyphus, seizes the opportunity to fetter him with strong bands, and then no one can die. ”

“ Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror. ”

“ Autolycus saw at once that he had been outwitted, and he fain would have made friends with one who was more crafty than himself. But Sisyphus dealt treacherously with him, as he did with every one who trusted him. Yet men say, that, now he is dead, he has his reward in Hades; for there he is doomed to the never-ending toil of heaving a heavy stone to the top of a hill, only to see it roll back again to the plain. [1] It was from him that men learned to call your grandfather the King of Cattle Thieves; with how much justice, you may judge for yourself. ”

“ It is said that on this occasion Sisyphus seduced Autolycus's daughter Anticleia, and that Odysseus was really the son of Sisyphus, not of Laertes, whom Anticleia afterwards married. The object of the story is to establish the close connexion between Hermes, the god of theft and cunning, and the three persons—Sisyphus, Odysseus, Autolycus—who are the incarnate representations of these practices. Autolycus is also said to have instructed Heracles in the art of wrestling, and to have taken part in the Argonautic expedition. ”

“ At this moment the bard Phemius came up, and the old man walked quickly away.
"What does he mean?" asked Odysseus, turning to his tutor. "What does he mean by saying that my grandfather is the king of cattle thieves, and by speaking of Hermes as my great-grandfather?"
"They tell strange tales about Autolycus, the mountain chief," Phemius answered; "but whether their stories be true or false, I cannot say. The old man who was talking to you is from Corinth, where once reigned Sisyphus, a most cruel and crafty king. From Corinth, Sisyphus sent ships and traders to all the world ”

“ Sisyphus had for his sons Glaukos and Ornytiôn. From Glaukos sprang Bellerophôn, whose romantic adventures commence with the Iliad, and are further expanded by subsequent poets: according to some accounts he was really the son of Poseidôn, the prominent deity of the Æolid family. [267] The youth [p. 122] and beauty of Bellerophôn rendered him the object of a strong passion on the part of the Anteia, wife of Prœtos king of Argos. Finding her advances rejected, she contracted a violent hatred towards him, and endeavored by false accusations to prevail upon her husband to kill him. ”

“ The wise alone do not seek to [Pg 142] forget, for memory is their reward already; so also they only are truly deathless, since they only are conscious of their immortality. The tortures of Tenarus are truly divine pictures of the vices and their eternal chastisement. The greed of Tantalus, the ambition of Sisyphus, will never be expiated, since they can never be satisfied. Tantalus is athirst in the water, Sisyphus rolls a stone towards the top of a mountain, hoping to take his seat thereon, but it falls back continually and drags him down into the abyss. ”

“ But, even if the Sisyphus fragment cannot be used to characterise its author as an atheist, it is, nevertheless, of the greatest interest in this connexion, and therefore demands closer analysis.
The introductory idea, that mankind has evolved from an animal state into higher stages, is at variance with the earlier Greek conception, namely, that history begins with a golden age from which there is a continual decline. The theory of the fragment is expressed by a series of authors from the same and the immediately succeeding period. It occurs in Euripides ”

“ Another criminal was Sisyphus, who, while king of Corinth, had misused his power, had robbed and killed travelers, and even deceived the gods. His reprehensible conduct was punished in Tartarus, where he was condemned [Pg 168] to roll a huge stone to the top of a very steep hill ”

“ But even this wily descendant of Sisyphus would have found it no such easy matter to deal with the English suitors, who were not the feeble voluptuaries of the Ionian Islands, that suffered themselves to be butchered as unresistingly as sheep in the shambles—actually standing at one end of a banqueting-room to be shot at with bows and arrows, not having pluck enough to make a rush—but were game men; all young, strong, rich, and in most cases technically "noble;" ”

“ Sisyphus himself had hardly less variety of occupation than some of our shepherds whose work on the hills involves long absences from social intercourse. To such men (whose life is suggestive of a repeating decimal) the access to an ell or two of good books often{64} means mental salvation. ”

“ He then obtained leave to return to earth, that he might persuade his wife to bury him. Now, the wily old king had previously bribed Hermês, when he took him to Hadês, to induce Zeus to grant him life, provided he returned to earth again in the body; when, therefore, he did return, he demanded of Hermês the fulfillment of his promise, and Hermês induced Zeus to bestow on him life. Sisyphus was now allowed to return to earth, with a promise that he should never die again, till he him [408] self implored for death. ”