Tantalus

For indeed Menelaus was not far removed from Tantalus and Pelops;

so that not only against the body, but against the soul of the tyrant the swords are fixed, so that Tantalus in Hades, who, they say, dreads the rock overhanging his head, passes his time far more easily.

Which do you prefer — to hear prudent discourses about Agamemnon, from which one may benefit the mind, or does Agamemnon named "son of Atreus" annoy you in the discourses?

do those things terrify you — the three-headed Cerberus among the dead, the roaring of Cocytus, the ferrying across Acheron, Tantalus touching the surface of the water with his chin yet wasted with thirst;

The force of which evil the poets, signifying, make a rock to hang over Tantalus among the dead, on account of his crimes and the powerlessness and arrogant speech of his mind.

I judge that the feast prepared by Tantalus for the gods is not to be believed, that they fed on the flesh of his son;

A terrible anger from the gods has boiled up against the race of Tantalus and drives them through torments.

The blessed Tantalus—and I am not now taunting him with his misfortunes—

Tantalus, the reputed son of Zeus, flies in the air, quailing at the rock which looms above his head;

to reach that rock which hangs suspended midway between earth and heaven, that fragment from Olympus, which swings on chains of gold, so that I may utter my lament to Tantalus, my forefather, who begot the ancestors of my house.

Have they not very nearly outdone the poets' tales about Tantalus?

There is added also death, which, like the rock over Tantalus, forever hangs above;

and Tityus was contemporary with Tantalus.

And he left behind the ancient scepter of Tantalus, and is dead;

In the first place—to reproach you first with this—it was not of my own free will but by force that you took and wed me, after slaying Tantalus, my former husband, and dashing my baby on the ground when you had torn him from my breast with brutal violence.

There were tall trees, moreover, that shed their fruit over his head - pears, pomegranates, apples, sweet figs and juicy olives, but whenever the poor creature stretched out his hand to take some, the wind tossed the branches back again to the clouds.

and in consequence, we experienced a change so great that, although in former times any barbarians who were in misfortune presumed to be rulers over the Greek cities (for example, Danaus, an exile from Egypt, occupied Argos, Cadmus of Sidon became king of Thebes, the Carians colonized the islands, and Pelops, son of Tantalus, became master of all the Peloponnese), yet after that war our race expan …

For Zeus, who, as the myths relate and all men believe, was the father of Heracles and Tantalus, made the one immortal because of his virtue, and inflicted on the other the severest punishments because of his evil character.

Ponder well the fact (to touch upon examples from the distant past) that while no man, whether poet or writer of prose, would applaud the wealth of Tantalus, or the rule of Pelops, or the power of Eurystheus, all the world, with one accord, would praise—next to the unrivalled excellence of Heracles and the goodness of Theseus—the men who marched against Troy and all others who have proved to be like them.

No Tantalus, benumbed

With baseless terror, as the fables tell,

Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:

Since one of the gods has turned aside for us the stone of Tantalus above our heads, an unbearable hardship for Greece.

Son of Tantalus, I will speak of you, contrary to earlier stories.

If indeed the watchers of Olympus ever honored a mortal man, that man was Tantalus.

He has this helpless life of never-ending labor, a fourth toil after three others, because he stole from the gods nectar and ambrosia, with which they had made him immortal, and gave them to his drinking companions.

What are the stories?

And any one would think the name of Tantalus was given rightly and in accordance with nature, if the stories about him are true.

The many terrible misfortunes that happened to him both in his life, the last of which was the utter overthrow of his country, and in Hades, after his death, the balancing (ταλαντεία) of the stone above his head, in wonderful agreement with his name;

for I would rather have my words stay fixed and stable than possess the wisdom of Daedalus and the wealth of Tantalus besides.

Nay more, Tantalus also did I there behold.

I have heard with my own ears how our Phrygian guest, the daughter of Tantalus, perished in so much suffering on steep Sipylus—how, like clinging ivy, the sprouting stone subdued her.

Despotic rule over unwilling subjects they give, I fancy, to those whom they judge worthy to live the life of Tantalus, of whom it is said that in hell he spends eternity, dreading a second death.