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Sisyphus
(redirected from Sisyphean)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.15 sec.
Sisyphus (sĭs`ĭfəs), in Greek mythology, son of Aeolus and founder and king of Corinth. Renowned for his cunning, he was said to have outwitted even Death. For his disrespect to Zeus, he was condemned to eternal punishment in Tartarus. There he eternally pushed a heavy rock to the top of a steep hill, where it would always roll down again. Albert Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphus is based on this legend.

Sisyphus

In Greek mythology, the king of Corinth who was punished in Hades by having to roll a huge stone up a hill over and over again. He was the son of Aeolus and the father of Glaucus. When Death came to fetch him, Sisyphus had him chained up so that no one died until Ares came to free Death. Before being taken to the underworld, Sisyphus asked his wife to leave his body unburied. When he reached Hades he was permitted to go back to earth to punish his wife, and he lived to a ripe old age before dying a second time. His trickery resulted in his punishment in Hades.


Sisyphus
man condemned to roll up a hill a huge stone which always rolls back before he gets it to the top. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 1006]

Sisyphus
condemned to impossible task for his avarice. [Gk. Myth.: Wheeler, 1011]
See : Greed

Sisyphus
condemned in Hades to roll boulder uphill which would immediately roll down again. [Gk. Myth.: Zimmerman, 244; Gk. Lit.: Odyssey; Rom. Lit.: Aeneid]


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in a Sisyphean struggle to roll his prized ball of dung up a hill.
The nobility of human existence, as recognized by the pre-Christian Greeks (whose surviving writings provide our record of man's early thought on these matters), lies in the pursuit of good, or of virtue, in the consciousness that this is a Sisyphean undertaking, and that the fates of man and history are tragic.
The college tries to instill its students with the professional skills of Western journalism and the concepts of a free and adversarial press--a Sisyphean task in many ways.
 
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