Tantalus. Tantalus was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his eternal punishment in Tartarus.
He was also called Atys. 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.
He was the father of Pelops, Niobe and Broteas, and was a son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto. Thus, like other heroes in Greek mythology such as Theseus and the Dioskouroi, Tantalus had both a hidden, divine parent and a mortal one.
Plato in the Cratylus interprets Tantalos as talantatos, who has to bear much from talas wretched. R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European interpretation.
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. 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 referred to as Phrygian, and sometimes even 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 BC, 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
He was also called Atys. 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.
He was the father of Pelops, Niobe and Broteas, and was a son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto. Thus, like other heroes in Greek mythology such as Theseus and the Dioskouroi, Tantalus had both a hidden, divine parent and a mortal one.
Plato in the Cratylus interprets Tantalos as talantatos, who has to bear much from talas wretched. R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European interpretation.
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. 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 referred to as Phrygian, and sometimes even 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 BC, 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
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