Tantalus.
A son of Zeus and the Titaness Pluto, Tantalus married Dione, daughter of Adas, and was the father of Niobe and Pelops. Several crimes were attributed to him. An intimate of the gods, Tantalus was invited to dine on Olympus but stole the nectar and ambrosia and then spread tales of the family of gods to men. When he returned the Olympians’ hospitality, Tantalus cut up his son Pelops and served him in a stew. According to some accounts, he did this to test the gods’ omniscience. None of them would touch the gruesome meal except Demeter, who, preoccupied with the loss of her daughter, Persephone, ate a piece of the boy’s shoulder. Tantalus was also guilty of swearing a false oath in the name of Zeus, saying that he knew nothing of the theft of a golden dog that had guarded the infant Zeus, although he had either sheltered it after the theft or stolen the dog himself.
       For the first and second of these crimes, Tantalus was punished in Tartarus, condemned to stand chin deep in water that receded when he tried to drink, and with ripe fruit just out of reach above him (from this predicament we derive the word “tantalize’). For the last impiety a huge boulder was perilously suspended over him.
       Tantalus is usually depicted in the postdassical arts standing in a pool of water and reaching for the fruits above him. He is sometimes grouped with Ixion, Sisyphus, and Tityus, known collectively as the Four Blasphemers (or Deceivers, Disgracers, Condemned).
      
       Classical Sources. Homer, Odyssey 11.582-92. Pindar, Olympian Odes i.jjfF.; Isthmian Odes 8.10. Lucretius, De rerum natures 3.98off. Cicero, De finibus 1.60. Horace, Epodes i7.65ff. Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.458-59, 6.401-n. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.5.6, E2.1-3. Seneca, Thyestes 718. Hyginus, Fabulae 9, 11, 82, 83. Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead 7, “Menippus and Tantalus.
      
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