Tantalus (), was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: for either revealing many secrets of the gods, for stealing ambrosia from them, or for trying to trick them into eating his son, he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. This punishment, although the best-known today, was a more unusual detail in surviving early Greek sources, where variants including a stone suspended above his head are more commonly recorded.
The ancient Greeks used the proverb "Tantalean punishment" (: ), in reference to people with nice things who are unable to experience them.Suida, s.v. tau.78 His name and punishment are also the source of the English word tantalize, meaning to torment with the sight of something desired but out of reach; tease by arousing expectations that are repeatedly disappointed. 'The rock of Tantalus' was also used as a proverbial expression by Pindar and Archilochus,Pindar, Isthmian 8 10–12Archilochus, fr.91. in the same vein as the Sword of Damocles, to suggest being unable to enjoy something because attempting to do so places one in a position of perpetual imminent peril.
Etymology
Plato in the Cratylus (395e) interprets () as () [acc. : in the original], "who has to bear much" from () "wretched". The Third Vatican Mythographer claims that the name means "wishing for a vision".Third Vatican Mythographer, 21 (=Pepin, p. 249).
The word () is held by some to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European, although R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European interpretation.R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 1449.
Based on a similarity between the names Tantalus and Hantili, Martin Litchfield West has suggested that the name Tantalus may have derived from that of these two Hittite kings.
Historical background There may have been a historical Tantalus, possibly the ruler of an Anatolian city named "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or of a city named "Sipylus".This refers to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the Common Era, although few traces remain today. See Sir James Frazer, Pausanias, and other Greek sketches (later retitled Pausanias's Description of Greece). Pausanias reports that there was a port under his name and a sepulcher of him "by no means obscure", in the same region.
Tantalus is sometimes referred to as "King of Phrygia", although his city was located in the western extremity of Anatolia, where Lydia was to emerge as a state before the beginning of the first millennium BCE, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more inland. References to his son as "Pelops the Lydian" led some scholars to the conclusion that there would be good grounds for believing that he belonged to a primordial house of Lydia.
Other versions name his father as Tmolus, the name of a king of Lydia and, like Sipylus, of another mountain in ancient Lydia. The location of Tantalus's mortal mountain-fathers generally placed him in Lydia;Pindar, Olympian Odes 1.24–38, 9.9; Strabo, 1.3.17; Pausanias, 5.1.6 & 9.5.7 and more seldom in PhrygiaStrabo, 12.8.21 or Paphlagonia,us Siculus, 4.74 all in Asia Minor.
The geographer Strabo states that the wealth of Tantalus was derived from the mines of Phrygia and Mount Sipylus. Near Mount Sipylus are archaeological features that have been associated with Tantalus and his house since Antiquity. Near Mount Yamanlar in İzmir (ancient Smyrna), where the Lake Karagöl (Lake Tantalus) associated with the accounts surrounding him is found, is a monument mentioned by Pausanias: the tholos "tomb of Tantalus" (later Christianized as "Saint Charalambos's tomb") and another one in Mount Sipylus,Various sites called the "tomb of Tantalus" have been shown to travellers since the time of Pausanias. and where a "throne of Pelops", an altar or bench carved in rock and conjecturally associated with his son is found.
Family Tantalus was generally said to be a son of Zeus and a woman named Pluto.Junk, Tim (2006) s.v. Pluto Mother of Tantalus (by Zeus), in Brill’s New Pauly Online. In a few sources Tmolus is given as the father.Scholium ad Euripides, Orestes 5. The identity of his wife is variously given: generally as Dione the daughter of Atlas;Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.174; Hyginus, Fabulae 82 & 83 Euryanassa, daughter of Pactolus, a river-god of Anatolia;Scholia ad Euripides, Orestes 5; Tzetzes on Lycophron, 52Pseudo-Plutarch, Parallela minora 33. Clytia, the child of Amphidamantes;Scholia ad Euripides, Orestes 11 and Eupryto.Apostol. Cent. 18.7
Tantalus was the father of Pelops, Niobe, and Broteas. A scholium on the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius adds Dascylus as a child of Tantalus.Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2.752 Through Pelops, Tantalus was the progenitor of the House of Atreus, which was named after his grandson Atreus and which was plagued by misfortune, making the house the subject of many Greek tragedies. Comparative table of Tantalus's familyRelation and NameSourcesPin.Sch. ad Eur.Aris.Iso.Sch. Ap. Rh.Lyc.Dio. Sic.Hor.Par.Ov.Str.Stat.Apd.Tac.Plut.Hyg.Pau.Clem.Anti.Non.Ser.Gk. Ant.Tzet.ParentageTmolus and Pluto✔✔Zeus✔✔✔✔Zeus and Pluto✔✔✔✔✔SpouseEuryanassa✔✔✔Dione✔✔✔Eupryto✔ChildrenPelops✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔Niobe✔Not named but certainly describes her✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔✔Dascylus✔Broteas✔
Tantalus's grave-sanctuary stood on SipylusPausanias, 2.22.3 but honours were paid him at Argos, where local tradition claimed to possess his bones.Pausanias, 2.22.2 In Lesbos, there was another hero-shrine in the small settlement of Polion and a mountain named after Tantalus.Stephen of Byzantium, noted by Kerenyi 1959:57, note 218.
Mythology Punishment in Hades The oldest surviving reference to Tantalus is the Odyssey. Odysseus sees him there when he journeys to Hades, standing in a pool of water up to his chin beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever Tantalus reached for the fruit, the wind blew the branches out of his reach; whenever he tried to drink, the water receded before he could reach it.Homer, Odyssey 11.582–92. However, the crime for which this is the punishment is not mentioned. The earliest account of Tantalus's crime is that found in a fragment of the lost Nostoi preserved in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus. Tantalus is punished by Zeus after Zeus swears an oath to give him anything he asks for, and Tantalus asks to be allowed to live like the gods. Zeus is bound by his oath to do this, but as a punishment Zeus places a giant rock above his head so that, although Tantalus has access to a banquet akin to that which the gods enjoy, fear of the rock falling prevents him from ever enjoying it.Nostoi fr. 4 in Poetae Epici Graeci ed. A. Bernabé. (1987) 1, p. 96.
In other surviving early Greek sources, the stone perpetually hanging above Tantalus's head is the more popular variant of the punishment. The rock is also mentioned in fragments of Archilochus, Alcman,Poetae Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Alcman, fragment 79. Alcaeus, and Pherecydes. The crime for which this is the punishment is, however, absent from the fragments.
Pausanias ( CE) reports that in the Knidian lesche, a building at Delphi full of paintings by Polygnotus depicting different mythological scenes, Tantalus is shown enduring both the punishment of the retreating food and drink recorded in the Odyssey and that of the rock hanging above his head. Pausanias states that Polygnotus is following the tradition of the poet Archilochus, but adds that he does not know whether Archilochus was the origin of this variant or whether he was following another source.Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.31.12. Apollodorus also records both punishments together.Apollodorus, Epitome E.2. Other allusions to the story generally tend to continue to refer to either the rock alone, or the rock and the receding food and water. Further reference to the punishment but without mention of the specific crime are found in Horace (65 BCE–8 CE), who mentions the receding water in the first Satire,Horace, Satires 1.1.61 Lucretius (–55 BCE), who mentions Tantalus's fear of a boulder hanging in the air,Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.978–83. and Vergil, who in the Aeneid mentions a crag hanging over him.Vergil, Aeneid 6.602-603
Despite the crime of attempting to feed his son to the gods being the most well-known variant today, in antiquity there were multiple variants reporting different crimes. Most, but not all, of these involve a feast to some degree. References to the attempt to feed the gods his dismembered son appear comparatively late in the surviving sources.
Feasting
The variant in which Tantalus attempts to feed the gods his dismembered son is, however, clearly familiar to audiences by the time of Pindar ( BCE). In his first Olympian Ode, Pindar initially alludes to the story in which Pelops is killed, served as food, and partially eaten, by explaining that Clotho, one of the three Fates, revived Pelops in a cauldron, replacing his shoulder with one of ivory.Pindar, Olympian 1, 25–27. A scholiast commenting on this passage in Pindar reports that according to Bacchylides (–), it was Rhea who revived Pelops by placing him in a cauldron.Scholiast on Pindar Olympian 1, 40a: = Bacchylides, fr. 42 SM
However, in Olympian 1 Pindar rejects this version, implying that it is a lie and adding that it is better to speak well of the gods.Pindar, Olympian 1, 28–35. He then relates a different account in which Tantalus invited the gods to a meal to repay them for inviting him to feast with them. Nothing went amiss with the meal, but Poseidon, on seeing Pelops, was overcome with desire for him and carried him off in his chariot.Pindar, Olympian 1, 39–46. The sudden disappearance of Pelops, and the failure of attempts to find him, led envious neighbours to spread rumours that he had been killed, cooked, and eaten. Pindar's choice of words in describing these rumoured events imply that the gods also participated in the act of killing Pelops. Although it is possible Pindar is reporting a variant he was aware of, Douglas Gerber suggests that the implication that the gods participated in the gruesome acts is meant to elevate the horror of the scene, and thus simultaneously make it seem less believable. In a similar vein, in the Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides, Iphigenia refers to the 'feast of Tantalus' that the gods attended and enjoyed as unworthy of belief.Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris vv.385–91. It is unclear, however, whether her denial is that the gods enjoyed the meal, or that they ate it at all, or that Tantalus attempted to feed the gods his son, on 385–91. and whether Euripides meant Iphigenia's denial to follow Pindar's variant in which Tantalus is the victim of the rumours of envious neighbours cannot be established by what is given in the play. In Euripides's Helen the character of Menelaus, mentions Pelops in relation to a feast, but the feast is referred to one which Pelops himself was 'persuaded' to make.Euripides, Helen,388–89. The text, however, is generally considered corrupt, rather than referring to an otherwise unknown variant in which Pelops himself agreed to host a banquet.