Tantalus was also said to have stolen a golden dog belonging to Zeus—or to have persuaded a man named Pandareos to steal it for him. When challenged, Tantalus swore in the name of his father Zeus that he knew nothing about the dog. Zeus was so angry about the lie that he used a huge rock from Mount Sipylus to crush Tantalus to death. The king was carried off to the underworld, where an even worse fate awaited him.
Left: French artist Bernard Picart (1673—1733) engraved Tantalus enduring the punishment Zeus set him. Tantalus was sent to Tartarus, in the underworld, where he could not quench his thirst from water in which he stood or feed his hunger with fruit that was just out of reach.
In Tartarus, the part of the underworld where sinners were punished, Tantalus was forced to stand up to his chin in a pool of fresh water, but whenever he tried to lower his mouth to the water to drink, the water level dropped and he could not reach it. Hanging above the pool were tree branches laden with delicious ripe fruit; but when Tantalus tried to reach for some, the wind blew the branches aside so that he could never quite touch them. According to some versions, Zeus also balanced a massive boulder above Tantalus so that as well as suffering from eternal hunger and thirst, he was constantly nervous about the boulder crushing him.
Tantalus’s fate served as an example to others, warning them not to upset the gods, and many ancient Greek and Roman writers retold his story. In the Odyssey by Homer (c. ninth-eighth century BCE), for example, the hero Odysseus recounts the sight of Tantalus suffering when he visited the land of the dead, and describes the “pear-trees and pomegranates, apple-trees with their glossy burden, sweet figs and luxuriant olives” that were tormenting Tantalus. Other writers who recorded the story of Tantalus include Apollodorus (third century BCE), Hyginus (first century BCE), Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), and Plutarch (c. 46-120 CE).
Because it makes such a striking visual image, Tantalus’s punishment has appeared countless times in art from ancient to modern times.
World History
