If Tantalus realized that his death by starvation - by lack of food and water - was a punishment for the fact that he turned a human being (who was also his son) into food, it would imply realizing that his cruelty and arrogance in deceiving the gods by using his peer annihilated him, prevented him from living. This insight, the exact dimension of boundaries, is liberating - there is no longer a shift to hope and, hence, to anxiety. The god then blasted him with a bolt of lightning and threw him into Tartarus (hell), condemning him to rotate eternally tied to a wheel.Īccording to Albert Camus’ interpretation, when Sisyphus accepts his punishment, he frees himself because he understands that the punishment does not end when he completes the journey everything restarts, the fallen stone has to be taken up again, this is the punishment. To test his daring, Zeus metamorphosed a cloud into his own wife, who was thus impregnated by Ixion (the children were the centaurs, except Chiron). At this feast, Ixion defied the god by insisting on seducing his wife. It was at this moment that Zeus, out of pity, saved Ixion from madness, restored his sanity, and invited him to a feast. By failing, he went mad when he saw him charred. Hearing his father-in-law’s screams while being incinerated, he regretted it and tried to save him.

Ixion, in revenge, threw him into an incendiary chamber to kill him. He married and refused to hand over the horses, to which his father-in-law reacted by taking the horses by force. When he first fell in love he promised to give his future father-in-law several horses in exchange for marrying his daughter. Whenever he tries to quench his thirst, the water drains when he tries to grab something to eat, the food moves out of reach.Īlso punished, Ixion suffers terrible punishment for his insistence on his disrespect to the gods.

He is deprived of drinking and eating, even though he is surrounded by an abundant table and all kinds of food: meats, fruits, and other delicious delicacies. The torment of Tantalus, punished for holding an anthropophagic feast of his own son and offering it to the gods, is exemplary. In this context, the punishment imposed on Sisyphus is remarkable: he had to eternally carry a huge stone to the top of a mountain, which would roll down to the starting point whenever he approached the top, forcing him to repeat the effort uninterruptedly. Disobeying a god or going against divine power in classical Greece entailed severe punishment and penalties.

Consequences by Tantalus