12. The Red Wedding Has Nothing on This Wedding From Ancient Greek Mythology
To disobey one’s parents was a great sin in ancient Greece. So all of Danaus’ daughters, except one who took pity on her new husband after he respected her desire to remain a virgin, took their spouses’ lives on their wedding night. They then cut off their heads and buried them near a lake south of Argos. Danaus hauled the daughter who had had disobeyed him before a court, but her husband intervened and ended Danaus in the name of vengeance for his 49 brothers. He and his wife then ruled Argos, and inaugurated a dynasty that ran that city for centuries.
As to the 49 daughters who had obeyed and ended their husbands, they remarried, and chose new mates from the winners of a footrace. The gods however punished them by sending them to Tartarus, the ancient Greek mythology version of hell – an abyss where the wicked are subjected to suffering and torment. There, the 49 daughters were condemned to spend an eternity of ceaseless and hopeless labor, reminiscent of Sisyphus – see, below. They were to carry jugs of water to fill a bathtub to wash away their sins, but the bathtub could never be filled because it had a hole in the bottom.
