Everyone knows the stone, but what was Sisyphus's crime? The short answer: three acts with the same root. He handed over a god for a spring of water, chained Death, and after being freed did not want to return to the realm of the dead. It was not malice. In the version that Albert Camus summarizes in The Myth of Sisyphus, and that the video recounts, his crime, from start to finish, is passion for life. Below is the story of the myth, in the order it unfolds.
The crime in three acts
Sisyphus was king of Corinth and had a reputation as the most cunning of mortals. The three acts, in the order the myth tells them, are the one about the water, the one about Death, and the one about the return.
First act: handing a god over for water
The story begins with a witness. Sisyphus sees Jupiter, the Roman name Camus chooses, which corresponds to Zeus among the Greeks, abduct Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus. The father comes looking for his daughter, and Sisyphus makes a deal: he tells where she is and asks in return for a spring of water for his city. Camus records the exchange in a single line, and that line is the key to the character. Sisyphus preferred the blessing of water to celestial lightning bolts. He handed over a god, and he did it for water.
Second act: chaining Death
The punishment came right away. They sent Death to fetch him, and Sisyphus, instead of going, chained Death.
Stop here for a second, because this is no anecdote. If Death is chained, no one dies. Camus's text is dry: Pluto could not bear the spectacle of his deserted and silent empire, and ordered the god of war to free Death from the hands of the one who had defeated her. But think about what was happening up above while she was held. A village, an illness, and no remedy. The sick do not die, they stay. The wounded stay, and the old stay. People keep being born and no one leaves, and the food meant for a thousand must now feed three thousand. And the sick person who can no longer bear the suffering wants to die and cannot.
The question the video asks is a serious one: freeing Death, knowing all those people will die, is it the right thing to do? If your answer was yes, you just said something important, that death is part of life. And if it is, then Sisyphus's condemnation is not arbitrary. It is tailor-made: whoever tried to stop time is condemned to a task that does not end.
Third act: the request to his wife and the return that never ended
He still landed one more blow. Before going down, he asked his wife not to bury him. Down below, he complained of being left unburied and asked permission to return and settle the matter. They granted it. Sisyphus returned, saw the sea and the sun again, and no longer wanted to go down. He had to be dragged back by force.
The thesis: punished for wanting to stay
The three acts say the same thing. Camus writes that contempt for the gods, hatred of death, and passion for life are what earned him that torment (The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, Brazilian edition by Record, quoted in our translation, chapter The Myth of Sisyphus). Sisyphus's crime, from start to finish, is always the same: passion for life. He is not punished for being wicked. He is punished for wanting to stay. The moral drawn from the myth, and how it becomes a metaphor for modern life, is in The Moral of Sisyphus: A Metaphor for Modern Life.
This changes how we read the stone. The punishment is not a cruel miscalculation: a man who wanted to stop life from ending receives a task that does not end either. And this reading prepares what comes next in the essay. If the crime is loving life, then the descent down the mountain, the hour in which he walks back to the stone empty-handed, stops being mere penalty and becomes the place where he knows what he did. The next step is in One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: The Full Sentence.
And if you read another version of the myth?
The myth of Sisyphus exists in many versions, and it is normal for the one you read not to match this one. The version above is the one Camus summarizes and the video tells, with Jupiter, Aegina, Asopus, the spring, Death in chains, Pluto, and the request to his wife. The episode of Aegina and the spring has an ancient tradition: it appears in Apollodorus, in the Library (Book I, chapter 9). The details of how Sisyphus escapes death vary from author to author. The image of the stone, for its part, is old: it already appears in the Odyssey, in Book XI. If you are going to study the myth, know which version is in your hands.
Why this matters for reading Camus
Whoever only knows the stone reads Sisyphus as an ordinary punished man, and the essay's most famous line becomes a photo caption. Whoever knows the crime reads a different man: someone who bargained with the gods, defeated Death, and wanted to stay, and who after all that keeps going down the mountain. To see how this man enters the argument of the whole book, the starting point is The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus: Summary and Where to Start. And if you want to see the burden instead of hearing about it, there is the painting Titian made in 1548, discussed in Titian's Sisyphus: The Painting That Shows the Burden.
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See the recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What was Sisyphus's crime?
In the version Camus summarizes in The Myth of Sisyphus, there are three acts. He handed Jupiter (Zeus) over to Aegina's father in exchange for a spring of water. He chained Death when she came to fetch him. And, once freed, he did not want to return to the realm of the dead. Camus writes that contempt for the gods, hatred of death, and passion for life earned him his torment. He is punished for wanting to stay.
How did Sisyphus cheat death?
They sent Death to fetch him, and instead of going, Sisyphus chained her. With her bound, no one died, until Pluto, troubled by the spectacle of his empire deserted and silent, ordered the god of war to free Death from the hands of the one who had defeated her.
What is the story of the Sisyphus myth?
Sisyphus, king of Corinth and the most cunning of mortals, saw Jupiter abduct Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus, and told her father where she was in exchange for a spring of water. They sent Death to fetch him, and he chained her. Pluto ordered her released. Before going down, he asked his wife not to bury him. He returned with permission, saw the sea and the sun again, and did not want to go down once more. He had to be dragged back by force, and his torment was to push a stone up a mountain, endlessly.
Who pushes the stone in the Sisyphus myth?
Sisyphus himself, condemned by the gods after cheating Death. Camus takes him as an absurd hero, and what interests him is not the climb but the descent back to the stone, the hour of consciousness, in which he knows what will happen again.
Was Sisyphus condemned by Zeus?
The punishment comes from the gods, and the crime starts with Zeus, whom Camus calls by his Roman name, Jupiter. Sisyphus witnessed the abduction of Aegina and told her father where she was, asking in return for a spring for Corinth.
Continue: The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus: Summary and Where to Start · One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: The Full Sentence · Titian's Sisyphus: The Painting That Shows the Burden · A culture that accuses and does not absolve
Source lesson: O Mito de Sísifo, de Albert Camus