Myth Library · Capture Of Death And Mortal Escape

Sisyphus Binds Thanatos

2 source witnesses · 2 source-scoped variants · reviewed 2026-08-30

Sisyphus binds Thanatos and halts human death until the captive power is freed, with Hades and Ares preserved as conflicting release agents.

Canonical narrative

Zeus carries Aegina, daughter of Asopos, away from Phlius to Oenone through Corinth. Asopos searches for her. Sisyphus knows what happened and reveals the abduction. The disclosure brings Zeus’s anger down on the Corinthian, and Zeus sends Thanatos to take him.

Sisyphus sees Death coming. Instead of submitting, he binds Thanatos in powerful chains. The consequence is larger than one man’s reprieve: no human being dies while Death remains captive. The story does not make mortality a mood or metaphor. Thanatos is the working boundary whose restraint throws the mortal order into crisis.

The surviving transmission divides at the release. ToposText’s English version of the D scholion says that Hades delivers Sisyphus to Death and frees Death from the chains. A. H. Sommerstein’s translation of Pherecydes fr. 119 says that Ares hands Sisyphus over and releases Death. Sommerstein also warns that the transmitted ending is corrupt. The release agent therefore remains source-scoped; the two names cannot be blended into one scene.

Sisyphus prepares another escape before his death. He tells his wife Merope not to send the customary gifts for him to the underworld. When the dues remain unpaid, Hades releases Sisyphus so that he can return and rebuke her. He reaches Corinth and refuses to go back. Only after living into old age does he die again, and Hades sets the stone-rolling punishment so that escape cannot be repeated.

Thanatos is neither trickster nor tyrant in this account. He is the divine necessity Sisyphus interrupts. Chains can hold him for a time, but the world without Death becomes impossible, and release restores the mortal limit.

Episodes in this myth

Episode 1

Sisyphus Reveals Aegina’s Abduction

Sisyphus tells the searching Asopos that Zeus carried Aegina away, and Zeus sends Thanatos in anger.

Episode 2

Death in Chains

Sisyphus sees Thanatos coming and binds him so strongly that no human being dies.

Episode 3

Death Is Freed

The captive Thanatos is released, by Hades in ToposText’s translation and by Ares in Sommerstein’s translation.

Episode 4

The Unpaid Dues and Return

Merope withholds funerary gifts, Hades releases Sisyphus to rebuke her, and Sisyphus stays in Corinth until old age.

Participants and roles

Thanatos

comes to seize Sisyphus, is bound in powerful chains, and remains captive while no human being dies

Sisyphus

reveals Zeus’s abduction, binds Thanatos, arranges neglected funerary dues, and returns to Corinth

Zeus

abducts Aegina and sends Thanatos against Sisyphus after the abduction is revealed

Asopos

searches for his abducted daughter and learns from Sisyphus what Zeus has done

Aegina

is carried away by Zeus from Phlius to Oenone through Corinth

Ares

hands Sisyphus to Death and frees Thanatos in Sommerstein’s translation

Hades

frees Thanatos in the ToposText translation and later releases Sisyphus to seek unpaid funerary dues

Merope

withholds the customary funerary gifts at Sisyphus’s instruction

Source-scoped variants

Hades frees Death

Sisyphus binds Thanatos, no human dies, and Hades delivers Sisyphus to Death and frees Death from the chains.

What differs: The release agent is Hades; this differs from Sommerstein’s Ares reading of the same attributed Pherecydes tradition.

Greek Classical · Corinth

Ares frees Death

Sisyphus binds Thanatos, no human dies, and Ares hands Sisyphus to Death while releasing Death from the chains.

What differs: The release agent is Ares; Sommerstein notes corruption in the transmitted ending and keeps the lost-play reconstruction qualified.

Modern Classical Scholarship · Corinth

Source witnesses

EXPLICIT PRIMARY · Reviewed

D Scholia to the Iliad, Mythological Narratives

D Scholia to the Iliad; translated by R. Scott Smith et al.; Greek text edited by Helmut van Thiel · 2023

Entry D Scholia to Iliad; Pherecydes fr. 119 Fowler · Section 6.153 · RecordUrl https://topostext.org/work/866

The later D scholion attributes the story to Pherecydes fr. 119; this English translation names Hades as Death’s releaser.

Open reviewed source

EXPLICIT SECONDARY · Reviewed

Notes on Aeschylean Fragments

A. H. Sommerstein · 2010

Entry Notes on Aeschylean Fragments · Page 204-206 · Section Sisyphos Drapetes and Sisyphos Petrokylistes · RecordUrl https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/876/876/866

Sommerstein translates Pherecydes fr. 119 with Ares as Death’s releaser and notes that the transmitted ending is corrupt.

Open reviewed source