Tantalos
Tantalos ( ancient Greek Τάνταλος Tántalos ; Latin Tantalus ) is the progenitor of the Tantalid family in Greek mythology .
He acted outrageously against the gods and thus drew their curse on his house, which was to be ruled by murders within the family for five generations. He himself suffered "tantalum pains".
Origin and descendants
Tantalus was a powerful and immeasurably wealthy Lydian or Phrygian king who had his castle on the Sipylos Mountains and whose lands stretched for twelve days. Mostly he is given as the son of Zeus and Pluto ("The rich abundance"), a daughter of the titans Kronos and Rhea, another, later version mentions Omphale and the Lydians Tmolos as parents, or the father is not mentioned at all. Tantalus was married to Dione , Euryanassa or Klytia and was the father of Niobe , Broteas , Daskylos and Pelops .
Outrage
Tantalus was invited to dinner at the table of the gods, but stole nectar and ambrosia from them, which angered his hosts. In addition, the mortal hid a golden dog in his home that Pandareos had stolen from a temple and denied the act.
When the immortal gods came to a banquet for King Tantalus - something like this had only happened once before, at the wedding of Kadmos and Harmonia - he tried to put their omniscience to the test: he killed Pelops , his youngest Son, and had him served the gods as a meal, but in such a way that they should not recognize his deed. Demeter , desperate about the robbery of Persephone , consumed part of the shoulder, but the other gods noticed the atrocity immediately. They threw the pieces of the killed Pelops into a cauldron, and the moire clotho drew him out in known beauty. The devoured shoulder bone was replaced by one made of ivory by the gods.
punishment
The gods cast Tantalos in the Tartaros , the deepest region of Hades , and tormented him there with eternal torments, the proverbial "Tantalos torments". Homer describes this in the Odyssey as follows:
“I also saw the Tantalos, burdened with severe agony.
In the middle of the pond he stood, his chin flushed by the wave,
panting with thirst, and could not come to drink.
For as often as the old man bent down to cool his tongue;
The draining water disappeared, and
black sand appeared around the feet , dried by the enemy demon.
Fruitful trees bowed their branches at their tops,
full of balsamic pears, garnets and green olives,
Or full of sweet figs and apples with reddish spots.
But as soon as the old man got up to pick the fruit;
Suddenly the storm whirled them up to the shadowy clouds. "
Fruits and water are within his grasp, but remain inaccessible. Hunger and thirst were joined by constant fear for his life, as a mighty boulder hovered over Tantalos' head, which threatened to fall down and kill him at any moment.
Curse of the Tantalids
Finally, the gods cursed Tantalus and his clan, the Tantalids . As long as there are descendants, this curse is valid. The curse was that each of his descendants should kill a family member and incur further guilt. This triggered a long chain of violence and crimes that only ended with the last of the Tantalids: Orestes , who murdered his mother Clytaimnestra and thus avenged her murder of her husband Agamemnon , his father. Orestes himself met his fate through a snake bite.
family tree
Derived terms
Anders Gustav Ekeberg named the chemical element tantalum he discovered after tantalum .
In English, in analogy to the tantalum torture, a special form of a bottle holder is called tantalum .
swell
- Library of Apollodorus 3,5,6; Epitoms 2.1-3
- Homer , Odyssey 11,582-592
- Ovid , Metamorphoses, 4,458-459; 6,172-176; 6.403-411
- Pindar , Olympic Odes 1.24-64
literature
- Willy Scheuer: Tantalos 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 5, Leipzig 1924, Col. 75-85 ( digitized version ).
- Ludwig Preller: Greek Mythology II - Heroes. Berlin 1861, chapter 97
Individual evidence
- ↑ Diodorus 4.74
- ^ Pindar , Olympic Odes 1.38
- ^ Aeschylus , fragment 158 in the edition by August Nauck
- ^ Hyginus , Fabulae 82
- ^ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Iphigenia on Tauris. Philipp Reclam jun. Stuttgart, 1993. ISBN 3-15-000083-1 , page 64.
- ↑ Pindar, Olympic Odes 1.60 to 63
- ^ Antoninus Liberalis , Metamorphoses 36
- ^ Pindar, Olympic Odes 1.26-27; Ovid , Metamorphoses 6,403-411; Hyginus, Fabulae 83
- ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 82
