His brothers included Cretheus, Athamas, Salmoneus, and Perieres, as well as Deion and Magnes (in some sources). Sisyphus was the son of Aeolus, an early king of Thessaly, and his queen Enarete. In ancient art, Sisyphus was most commonly represented with his stone in Tartarus. In the end, his most famous attribute was not an aspect of his personality at all but rather the punishment for which he will always be remembered: the huge stone that he was forced to roll up a hill in Tartarus for all eternity. In the Iliad, he is described as the “craftiest of men,” while the poet Pindar wrote that he was “like a god…very shrewd in his devising.” īut Sisyphus also had a tendency to overstep his mortal bounds and offend the gods, which caused him no end of trouble. Sisyphus’ chief personal attribute was his cunning. But Sisyphus’ most common epithets evoked his craftiness through such Greek words as kerdiōn and aiolomētēs (meaning simply “crafty”). He was sometimes referred to as “Aeolides,” meaning “son of Aeolus”-a reference to his father, the Thessalian king Aeolus. Sisyphus only appears occasionally in surviving ancient literature and therefore only has a few epithets. More recently, other scholars have suggested some connection with the Greek word sophos, meaning “clever” or “wise.” Pronunciation In 1906, German scholar Otto Gruppe suggested that it was derived from the Greek word sisys, meaning “goatskin”-a reference, supposedly, to a rain-charm that employed goatskins. The etymology of the name “Sisyphus” (Greek Σίσυφος, translit.
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