and I could feel the rumblings of ironus in his endless torment, his prodigious surface area being pushed upward by two revoltingly soft human hands. With all his power he tried to embrace gravity, to become heavier and denser, to resist the human’s force and return to the valley floor. just as it seemed he could summon no more weight the pitiless human would lose his grip and ironus would come thundering down again on to the plain, triumphant! but not so. each and every time the human would return laying those soft hands upon him and begin forcing him up the hill again, and the sweat which ran off him and the steam which rose after him wet ironus’ surface and seeped into his tiny cracks and fissures…

that is a section from a well known account of the myth of ironus about an iron ore boulder who was punished by the gods. as the story goes, ironus was a proud boulder, so proud as to be cruel and even blasphemous. you see he was a grecian rock. and in greece it was none too common to find a huge mass of iron ore just lying there. greece was limestone country. no chalk, calcarenite, coquina, or travertine could remember how ironus came to rest there among their layers but everyrock counted the forgotten day of his arrival as a bad one.

rocks are a steady, solid folk. they do what they do well and are very nearly single minded about it, reason being rocks are extremely devout. any god would count himself lucky to have a world full of rocks as his worshippers. now though rocks would be hard pressed to deny that there is an entire pantheon of gods at work out there, shaping the universe, getting up to their mischief, the truth is rocks are near monothiestic in practice. sure they’ll embrace one of death’s trinkets if asked and bow to fire if they must, no reason to start trouble, but above all other gods the rocks adore gravity. they would follow gravity anywhere.

this brings us to ironus. he was a big, heavy, maganese rich lump of iron ore who had not moved an inch or been eroded a millimeter for as long as anyrock could remember. he just sat there, which would be very admirable, had he just done so quietly. instead ironus continually taunted the limestones around him-

“you weakling limestones will erode to nothing and i’ll still be here! you will be broken down bit by bit until your so small a weak little draft could blow you away. some tribute to gravity that will be! you’ll become tiny grains of sand getting dragged here and there by the tides moving about in solution for eternity! haha. you’ll end up weightless bits of dust, continually blown about. you’ll probably spend most of your time up in a cloud somewhere praying a raindrop will form around you so you can feel gravity again. pathetic limestones! look at me, i’m as heavy and massive and motionless as i ever was.  why you’re barely true rocks at all!”

now that was pretty cruel. it was not the limestones’ fault after all that they’d erode long before that most glorious day of days, the day they were waiting for, when gravity would take it’s rightful place as the king of all gods, compressing everyrock and everything into itself. fire would no longer melt them, water would no longer wear them down! huzzah! there were legends among the rocks of places where gravity was so strong not even fleet footed light could escape him! they’d be reunited with every one of their lost particles. they’d be whole again. all things crushed into an impossibly dense point under gravity!  heaven. every limestone new it’d most likely only make it there as disparate particles spread far and wide or worse as microscopic passengers clinging to the bones of some disgusting animal. ironus took every chance to remind them of this.

cruelty in and of itself is hardly a punishable offense where the gods are concerned. it would be ridiculously hypocritical considering all the cruelty they’ve been known engage in. but it so happened that one day in a fit of self congratulation ironus crossed the line. some humans had been by chipping at the limestones with little sticks. he taunted them and when they seemed to take no notice he began again taunting the limestones-

“ah look how easily you are chipped and pulverized! you pathetic collections of sediment. see how the soft ones don’t dare approach me! they sense my power. they can feel the gravity on me. they are scared! they know i am too strong. take heed little limestones! i am gravity incarnate! mysterious and vast and eternal. when the great crush comes it will be me floating here in space an impossible density with a spiraling galaxy spinning around me!

well at this gravity had heard enough. cruelty is one thing but putting oneself on equal footing with a god and shouting it to anyrock within sensing distance, well that was another. that was hubris of the worst kind. gravity contrived to have a small earthquake occur and used it’s shaking and shifting pomp to draw the big mouthed ironus into the underworld, surrounding limestones, humans with sticks and all. such was his annoyance.

it is said that as punishment gravity sentenced ironus to an eternity of being rolled up a hill. each day a small soft human would move him from his resting place, violate his claim to gravity, and push him further and further from the plain and up the hillside. if ironus gave in and allowed the puny human to move him he’d go over the hill’s peak and in a great rumbling roll be accepted again into gravity’s bosom. if he allowed himself to be pushed he’d be invited to rest unmolested forever in the valley on the other side of the mountain. but gravity knew what a prideful creature ironus was, knew that his ego would never allow him to perceive this means of release, and knew that day after day he would resist. and each day he did resist. did all he could to lower his center of gravity, to shift and slide from the human’s wet pink hands.

ironus, weighty and massive though he was, could never lay claim to any sort of intelligence. every day the human began again unperturbed and every day ironus struggled against him all the while being acted upon by friction and moisture from the man’s toil. each day he resisted and each day he eroded a little bit more. gravity knew full well this chunk of ore would resist until he found himself in a cloud, a microscopic dust particle, praying for rain.

and it was so.

turns out the great poignant myth of sisyphus was in fact somewhat misconstrued by we humans. it was ironus who was being punished. but after countless millennia of toil poor sisyphus simply switched to another rock and kept on going.

for some interesting related reading on the great story of sisyphus check out the following:

the basic myth from mythweb.

the myth of sisyphus by alber camus.

the absurd hero a reaction to camus’ famous essay.

the myth of sisyphus: a cycle by samanera bodhesako.

sisyphus, in his own words as posted to kiro5hin by one “friedrich dionysus.”

and here’s the section of homer’s odyssey which contains the text from which the first paragraphed was based. (4th paragraph from the bottom)