|
Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “Dealing with diabetes can be a ‘Sisyphean’ task.” Sisyphean? My comments: Diabetes being the kind of illness it is, i.e. once you have it, you tend to have it for life, it is not difficult to see the similarities between dealing with such an illness and a Sisyphean task, the kind of job that troubles Sisyphus. Sisyphus? Sisyphus is a king in Greek mythology. He’s the one who is seen pushing a boulder up a hill in picture books. Sisyphus, you see, is, or rather was crafty and unscrupulous, and had committed many wrongs and evils in his life. This much, from Wikipedia: King Sisyphus promoted navigation and commerce but was avaricious and deceitful. He also killed travellers and guests, a violation of xenia, which fell under Zeus’s domain. He took pleasure in these killings because they allowed him to maintain his iron-fisted rule. Sisyphus and his brother Salmoneus were known to hate each other, and Sisyphus consulted with the Oracle of Delphi on just how to kill Salmoneus without incurring any severe consequences for himself. From Homer onwards, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. He seduced Salmoneus’s daughter Tyro in one of his plots to kill Salmoneus, only for Tyro to slay the children she bore by him when she discovered that Sisyphus was planning on eventually using them to dethrone her father. | 
