On the contrary, he gives grateful thanks to his wife, proceeds to give her numerous children over the years, and ends his days dying quietly in old age. Profoundly shocked by such a lack of propriety, Hades allows Sisyphus to return home to the upper world, to chastise his unworthy spouse as he sees fit, on condition of course that he promises to come back directly afterward.Īs you may imagine, Sisyphus goes home and promptly forgets his promise about returning to the underworld.
So that, as soon as he arrives in the depths of the underworld, Sisyphus makes straight for Hades himself and complains bitterly about having such a bad wife, and no burial rites. Do not ask why, I will explain later.”Īnd Merope, his charming wife, does as her husband says: she does not watch over his corpse she carries out none of the rites that would normally be performed. But wrongly so: he has one more trick up his sleeve.īefore dying and forsaking his palace for the realm of Hades, Sisyphus makes a very strange request of his wife: “Above all, please grant this wish, and do not accord me any burial or such funeral honors as every good wife is obliged to perform on the day her husband dies. . . at which point you might think that the game is up for Sisyphus. You may guess why: If nobody dies any longer, what is the point of war? Ares finds Thanatos, frees him, and delivers into his hands the unfortunate Sisyphus, who is now well and truly forced to descend to Hades. It is Ares, god of war, who decides to act. Hades, wealthiest of all the gods, stops accumulating wealth: he no longer has his quota of the dead, and if Zeus does not do something to restore order, the planet earth will become so cluttered as to make life impossible. With Thanatos imprisoned, no one can die. As with the myth of Asclepius, the world now begins to go off the rails.
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