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Sisyphus

From N.S. Gill's Ancient/Classical History Glossary, for About.com

Sisyphus

Sisyphus

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Definition: Sisyphus was punished in Tartarus by having to push back up a hill a heavy rock that kept rolling back down. Sisyphus was compelled to push the rock for all eternity. His crime may have been, first, revealing Zeus' dalliance with Aegina to her father, Asopus, and second, craftily escaping from death until an old man.

Sisyphus was the son of King Aeolus of Aeolia (Thessaly), brother of Athamas, husband of the Pleiad Merope, father of Glaucus, grandfather of the hero Bellerophon, and the founder of the polis of Corinth. Some accounts of Odysseus say Sisyphus is his father.

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Examples: From the punishment Sisyphus suffered, the term Sisyphean task refers to an endless, pointless task.

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