Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/151

 SISYPHUS THE ^OLID. 119 neus and Kretheus. 1 The -Stolid Sisyphus was d.stinguished as an unexampled master of cunning and deceit. He blocked up the road along the isthmus, and killed the strangers who came along it by rolling down upon them great stones from the moun- tains above. He was more than a match even for the arch thief Autolycus, the son of Hermes, who derived from his father the gift of changing the color and shape of stolen goods, so that they could no longer be recognized : Sisyphus, by marking his sheep under the foot, detected Autolycus when he stole them, and obliged him to restore the plunder. His penetration discovered the amour of Zeus with the nymph JEgina, daughter of the river- god Asopus. Zeus had carried her off to the island of CEnone (which subsequently bore the name of -ZEgina) ; upon which Asopus, eager to recover her, inquired of Sisyphus whither she was gone : the latter told him what had happened, on condition that he should provide a spring of water on the summit of the Acro-Corinthus. Zeus, indignant with Sisyphus for this revela- tion, inflicted upon him in Hades the punishment of perpetually heaving up a hill a great and heavy stone, which, so soon as it attained the summit, rolled back again in spite of all his efforts, with irresistible force into the plain. 2 In the application of the -ZEolid genealogy to Corinth, Sisyphus, the son of JEolus, appears as the first name : but the old Corin- 1 See Euripid. ^Eol. Fragm. 1, Dindorf; Diksearch. Vit. Grsec. p. 22. 2 Respecting Sisyphus, see Apollodor. i. 9, 3 ; iii. 1 2, 6. Pausan. ii. 5, 1 . Schol ad Iliad, i. 180. Another legend about the amour of Sisyphus with Tyro, is in Hygin. fab. GO, and about the manner in which he overreached even Hades ( Pherekydes ap. Schol. Iliad, vi. 153). The stone rolled by Sisyphus in the under-world appears in Odyss. xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was given during the historical age to men of craft and stratagem, such as Derkyllides (Xenoph. Hellenic, iii. 1, 8). He passed for the real father of Odysseus, though Heyne (ad Apollodor. i. 9, 3^ treats this as another Sisyphus, where- by he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary resource for the purpose of reducing the legends into a seeming chronological sequence. Even in the days of Eumelus a religious mystery was observed respecting the tombs of Sisyphus and Neleus, the latter had also died at Corinth, no one could say where they were buried (Tansan. ii. 2, 2). Sisyphus even overreached Persephone 4, and made his escape from th*
 * nder- world (Theognis, 702).