in, incessantly renewed his fatigue, and
rendered his labor endless.

Ovid, in one passage, seems to describe Sisyphus as bending under the
weight of a vast stone; "but the more common way of speaking of his
punishment," says the author of Polymetis, "agrees with the fine
description of him in Homer, where we see him laboring to heave the
stone that lies on his shoulders up against the side of a steep
mountain, and which always rolls precipitately down again before he can
get it to rest upon the top. Lucretius makes him only an emblem of the
ambitious; as Horace too seems to make Tant{)a}lus only an emblem of the
covetous."

BELIDES, _or_ DANAIDES: They were the fifty daughters of Dan{)a}us, son
of Belus, surnamed the _ancient_. Some quarrel having arisen between him
and Egyptus his brother, it determined Dan{)a}us on his voyage into
Greece; but Egyptus having fifty sons, proposed a reconciliation, by
marrying them to his brother's daughters. The proposal was agreed to,
and the nuptials were to be celebrated with singular splendor, when
Dan{)a}us, either in resentment of former injuries, or being told by the
oracle that one of his sons-in-law should destroy him, gave to each of
his daughters a dagger, with an injunction to stab her husband. They all
executed the order but Hypermnestra, the eldest, who spared the life of
Lyncaeus. These Bel{)i}des, for their cruelty, were consigned to the
infernal regions, there to draw water in sieves from a well, till they
had filled, by that means, a vessel full of holes.

TANTALUS, king of Phrygia, was the son of Jupiter and Plota. Whether it
was for this cause, the violation of hospitality, or for his pride, his
boasting, his want of secrecy, his insatiable covetousness, his
imparting nectar and ambrosia to mortals, or for all of them together,
since he has been accused of them all, Tant{)a}lus was thrown into
Tart{)a}rus, where the poets have assigned him a variety of torments.
Some represent a great stone as hanging over his head, which he
apprehended to be continually falling, and was ever in motion to avoid
it. Others describe him as afflicted with constant thirst and hunger,
though the most delicious banquets were exposed to his view; one of the
Furies terrifying him with her torch whenever he approached towards
them. Some exhibit him standing to the chin in water, and whenever he
stooped to quench his thirst, the water as constantly eluding his lip.
Others, with fruits luxu