Sisifo a Greek myth to keep in mind

in #philosophy6 years ago

sisifo.jpg

Sisyphus was the son of the god Eolo and was king of the same city that he himself founded, Corinth, and during his reign he always stood out for his great ingenuity when ruling. He ordered the construction of walls around Corinth and made all travelers have to pay to pass through that city. He had many herds of cattle in his city and as a neighbor he had Autolico, who had the blessing of the god Hermes, who had given him the power to turn the bulls into cows and pass them from white to red, so the real The cattle owner would never find his cattle, despite being in front of him or very close. Little by little, Sisyphus saw his flocks dwindling and he began to suspect that something strange was happening, so he tried to remedy the matter by recording on the hooves of his cattle a phrase: "He stole Autólico" in small size, that would show that the cows had been stolen. Faced with such a gesture of cunning, Autólico sent his daughter Anticlea to make Sisyphus fall in love with him and to have children with him to inherit his intelligence and cunning in order to profit later with the ingenuity of his daughter's children. But Sisyphus, not only showed astuteness in this case of the thefts of cattle, but also managed to deceive the gods. One day when he was in his palace, Sisyphus saw a large eagle carrying a woman in its clutches. In this case, the eagle was an image of the very god Zeus, who had kidnapped Aegina, the daughter of Asopo, god of the rivers. A short time later, Asopo went to ask for help from Sisyphus, knowing his cunning. Sisyphus told him that he would tell him the name of the one who had kidnapped his daughter if in exchange he created a river on the hill where the city of Corinth was growing, to which Asopo agreed. Sisyphus told him that it had been Zeus, who upon noticing Asopo's presence became a stone so that he could not be detected. Zeus punished Sisyphus to go to the world of the dead, with his brother, the god Hades, but thanks to his cunning he again escaped from the hands of this god, later of Hermes, who had the power to visit both Olympus and world of the gods and even of Persephone, the wife of Hades. But finally Hermes managed to catch him and take him to the kingdom of Hades, where he was condemned to climb with a huge rock to the top of a hill and when it was up he fell down, with what that was the fate of Sisyphus, to repeat again and again the same during eternity



Thus, and beyond the myth, some interesting questions are captured. In the first place, a criminal like Sisyphus, who had lived through robbery and murder, an enemy. Second, a court, the Judges of the Dead. In the third place, an eternal punishment, cyclical, "hard tortures" as Homer pointed out, in which time starts again from a point. Fourth, both Homer and Graves, point out "sweat bathes his body and a cloud of dust rises on his head", a degradation of his dignity


Surce: Picture https://redhistoria.com/mitologia-griega-el-mito-de-sisifo/.
Text:Robert Graves. the Greek myths