Sisyphus

Sisyphus was the son of King Aelus of Thessaly and Enarete. He was known to the Greeks as the craftiest of men, and suffered for his trickery by endless labour in Tartarus, a place of punishment beneath the underworld. Sisyphus is credited with the foundation of Corinth. According to one tradition, he angered Zeus by revealing that the god had abducted the daughter of a river god. Zeus therefore sent Thanatos, god of death, to take Sisyphus to the underworld. Somehow the ingenious king temporarily made Thanatos his own prisoner. When the gods again claimed him, Sisyphus tricked Hades into letting him return to earth. Having told his wife to do nothing if he died, Sisyphus said that his body was unburied and the customary offerings to the dead had not been made. He must therefore see to the arrangements himself before he could be said to be truly dead. Finally, Zeus lost patience and condemned Sisyphus to Tartarus for his lifelong impiety. For the rest of eternity he had to roll a block of stone to the top of a hill only to see it roll back again as it reached the crest.