9. Divine Vengeance Visited Upon Homicidal Brides
To the Ancient Greeks, to disobey one’s parents was to commit a great sin. So all of King Danaus’ daughters, except one who took pity on her new husband after he respected her desire to remain a virgin, obeyed their father’s orders and murdered their spouses on the wedding night. They then cut off their heads and buried them near a lake south of Argos. Danaus hauled the daughter who had disobeyed him before a court, but her husband intervened and murdered Danaus to avenge his 49 brothers. He and his wife then ruled Argos, and began a dynasty that ran that city for centuries.
As to the 49 daughters who had murdered their husbands, they remarried, and chose their new mates from the winners of a footrace. The gods however were peeved at what they had done to their first husbands. By way of divine vengeance, they sent them to Tartarus, the Ancient Greek hell. There, the deadly Danaides were condemned to spend an eternity of ceaseless and hopeless labor, reminiscent of Sisyphus. They had 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.
