Sisyphus

Sisyphus was, according to Greek mythology, the first king of Ephyra. He was a very crafty and deceitful man. He ruled his land with an iron fist and took pleasure in killing travellers who visited it.

For his actions, Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain up Sisyphus in the Underworld. Upon arriving to the Underworld, isyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked. As Thanatos was granting his wish, Sisyphus seized the oportunity and trapped Thanatos in the chains instead. This caused an uproar on Earth as noone could die anymore. Ares, the god of war, was especially enraged because soldiers would no longer die in the battle. He captured and brought Sisyphus to the Underworld himself and then released Thanatos from his chains.

However, Sisyphus was able to cheat death for the second time. Before he died, he told his wife to not to carry out the usual ritual for his death, supposedly to test her love for him. In the Underworld, he then complained to Persophone, goddes of the Underworld, that this was a sign of his wife's disrespect for him. Persophone agreed to let him back to the land of living to instruct her wife to perform a proper ritual. Of course, Sisyphus made no attempt to return to the Underworld.

Sisyphus eventually died of the old age. As a punishment for his trickery, Zeus made Sisyphus push a boulder up a hill. Every time the boulder would be close to an end, it would roll away from Sisyphus and back to the beginning. Sisyphus will continoue to repeat this task for eternity.

His punishment had an impact on wide culture and the term Sisyphean task is used to describe actions that are laborious and futile.