Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer)

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[3] And Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, founded Ephyra, which is now called Corinth,¹ and married Merope, daughter of Atlas. They had a son Glaucus, who had by Eurymede a son Bellerophon, who slew the fire breathing Chimera.² But Sisyphus is punished in Hades by rolling a stone with his hands and head in the effort to heave it over the top; but push it as he will, it rebounds backward.³ This punishment he endures for the sake of Aegina, daughter of Asopus; for when Zeus had secretly carried her off, Sisyphus is said to have betrayed the secret to Asopus, who was looking for her.

¹ Compare Hom. Il. 6.152ff.; Paus. 2.1.1.

² As to Bellerophon and the Chimera, see Apollod. 2.3.1, with the note.

³ As to Sisyphus and his stone, see Hom. Od. 11.593-600. Homer does not say why Sisyphus was thus punished, but Paus. 2.5.1 and the Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.180 agree with Apollodorus as to the crime which incurred this punishment. Hyginus assigns impiety as the cause of his sufferings (Hyginus, Fab. 60). The picturesque story of this cunning knave, who is said to have laid Death himself by the heels, so that nobody died till Ares released Death and delivered Sisyphus himself into his clutches (Scholiast on Hom. Il. vi.153), was the theme of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 74ff., 251, 572; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 184ff. Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants at Athens, is credited with a play on the same theme, of which a very striking fragment, giving a wholly sceptical view of the origin of the belief in gods, has come down to us. See Sextus Empiricus, ed. Bekker, pp. 402ff.; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 771ff.

Cross references from Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus: The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary:
7, 197

Cross references from W. Walter Merry, James Riddell, D. B. Monro, Commentary on the Odyssey (1886):
11, 593 [Book 11 (l)]

Cross references from Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898):
merope [Merŏpé]

This text is based on the following book(s):
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
OCLC: 28280131
ISBN: 0674991354, 0674991362

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