TANTALUS, in Greek legend, son of Zeus or Tmolus and Pluto (Wealth), daughter of Himantes, the father of Pelops and Niobe. He was the traditional king of Sipylus in Lydia (or of Phrygia), and was the intimate friend of Zeus and the other gods, to whose table he was admitted. But he abused the divine favour by revealing to mankind the secrets he had learned in heaven (Diod. Sic. iv. 74), or by killing his son Pelops (q.v.) and serving him up to the gods at table, in order to test their power of obser vation (Ovid, Metam. vi. 401) ; another story was that he stole nectar and ambrosia from heaven and gave them to men (Pindar, 01. i. 6o) ; a fourth that he was guilty of perjury (Antoninus Liberalis, 36). The punishment of Tantalus in the lower world was famous. He stood up to his neck in water, which flowed from him when he tried to drink of it ; and over his head hung fruits which the wind wafted away whenever he tried to grasp them (Odyssey, xi. 582). This myth is the origin of the English word "tantalize." Another story is that a rock hung over his head ready to fall and crush him (Euripides, Orestes, 5). The sins of
Tantalus were visited upon his descendants, the Pelopidae. Ancient historical reminiscences and natural phenomena, espe cially volcanic catastrophes, are at the bottom of the legend. The tomb of Tantalus on Mt. Sipylus was pointed out in antiquity, and has been in modern times identified by C. F. Texier with the great cairn beneath Old Magnesia ; but Sir W. M. Ramsay inclines to a remarkable rock-cut tomb beside Magnesia.
The story of Tantalus is an echo of a semi-Greek kingdom, which had its seat at Sipylus, the oldest and city of Lydia, the remains of which are still visible. There was a tradition in antiquity that the city of Tantalus had been swallowed up in a lake on the mountain ; but the legend may, as Ramsay thinks, have been suggested by the vast ravine which yawns beneath the acropolis.
See PELOPS, PURYGIA ; Sir W. M. Ramsay in Journal of Hellenic Studies, iii. ; Frazer's Pausanias, iii. p. 555 ; v., p. ; J. Hylen, De Tantalo (Uppsala, 1896).