It is Ares, god of war, who decides to act. You may guess why: If nobody dies any longer, what is the point of war? Ares finds Thanatos, frees him, and delivers into his hands the unfortunate Sisyphus, who is now well and truly forced to descend to Hades. at which point you might think that the game is up for Sisyphus. But wrongly so: he has one more trick up his sleeve.īefore dying and forsaking his palace for the realm of Hades, Sisyphus makes a very strange request of his wife: “Above all, please grant this wish, and do not accord me any burial or such funeral honors as every good wife is obliged to perform on the day her husband dies. . . Do not ask why, I will explain later.”Īnd Merope, his charming wife, does as her husband says: she does not watch over his corpse she carries out none of the rites that would normally be performed. So that, as soon as he arrives in the depths of the underworld, Sisyphus makes straight for Hades himself and complains bitterly about having such a bad wife, and no burial rites. Profoundly shocked by such a lack of propriety, Hades allows Sisyphus to return home to the upper world, to chastise his unworthy spouse as he sees fit, on condition of course that he promises to come back directly afterward.Īs you may imagine, Sisyphus goes home and promptly forgets his promise about returning to the underworld. On the contrary, he gives grateful thanks to his wife, proceeds to give her numerous children over the years, and ends his days dying quietly in old age. Only then is he obliged to return underground, where he is forced to interminably roll his great boulder: a torment that Hades imposes so as not to be duped a second time. Persephone supervising Sisyphus in the Underworld. Attica black-figure amphora (vase), c.?530 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen. Credit: Public DomainĪs for the meaning of the torture itself, it relates directly (as always) to the crime. For mortals, life is a perpetual beginning, not an open road without end. In other words, and to restate the lesson of Odysseus, no individual can escape the essential finiteness of his human condition.“ 2 And whoever tries to push back these limits-as dispensed by the cosmic order-will learn to his cost that, once arrived at its term, the process must begin again from zero: life is a state of constant renewal. Many myths remain a vast and valuable store of wisdom.
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