Tantalos

Tantalus (Ancient Greek: Τάνταλος : Tántalos) 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.

According to other sources, his father was Tmolus or Manes, the first king of Lydia.

Plato in the Cratylus (395e) interprets Tantalos as ταλάντατος talantatos (acc. ταλάντατον in the original), "who has to bear much" from τάλας talas "wretched" (now the word talas is held to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European). R. S. P. Beekes has rejected 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 sepulchre of him "by no means obscure", in the same region.

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