10. In Greek Mythology, Sisyphus Was Too Clever for His Own Good
The mythology of Sisyphus had him pull off one more trick to cheat Death. He instructed his wife not to bury him or perform any of the sacred death rituals when he passed away, and to just throw his corpse out. She obeyed, and when Sisyphus arrived at the underworld, he begged Thanatos to allow him to return to earth to punish his wife for her “impiety”. Death agreed, but once Sisyphus was back on earth, he jumped bail and went on the lam. He continued to live to a ripe old age, before he died a second time. That was when Sisyphus discovered he had been too clever by half, and too smart for his own good.
The gods were not happy that Sisyphus had showed them up and made them look like fools. They also took offense at his self-aggrandizing deceitfulness, and the hubris that made him think he was more cunning than Zeus. So they set out to make an example of him. The gods thought, with some reason, that few punishments are more terrible than an eternity of futile and hopeless labor. So they condemned Sisyphus to an eternity of rolling a huge boulder up a steep hill. Soon as Sisyphus got his boulder to the top of the hill, it rolled down the other side, and he had to go back down and collect his boulder to roll it up the hill once again.
