What eternal task was Sisyphus condemned to perform?

Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder uphill forever, only for it to roll back down before he could complete the task.

In Greek myth, Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra, usually identified with Corinth, and was famous for cunning and deceit. Ancient accounts give different reasons for his punishment, including betraying Zeus’s secrets and repeatedly cheating death. His offenses challenged the authority of the gods, so his sentence became an especially stark form of eternal punishment.

The story appears in Homer’s Odyssey and later mythographic traditions. The boulder’s repeated descent makes the labor futile: every apparent success is erased, forcing Sisyphus to begin again. The punishment is often confused with simply pushing a rock uphill, but the endless return is the essential part of the myth.

The adjective “Sisyphean,” later popularized in philosophy and literature, describes a task that demands unending effort without lasting progress. Albert Camus used the figure in The Myth of Sisyphus as a symbol of the human struggle to find meaning in an apparently absurd world.