Among the criminals so justly overtaken by the divine vengeance Hercules noticed Salmoneus, whom he had formerly met upon earth. This madman, whose pride had overturned his reason, thought himself to be a god equal to the Thunderer himself.
In order to imitate remotely the rolling of thunder, he used to be driven at night, over a brazen bridge, in a chariot, whence he hurled lighted torches upon his unhappy slaves who were crowded on the bridge and whom his guards knocked down in imitation of Jove's thunder-bolts.
Indignant at the pride and cruelty of the tyrant, Jupiter struck him with lightning in deadly earnest and then cast him into the outer darkness of Tartarus, where he was for ever burning without being consumed.
Sisyphus, the brother of Salmoneus, was no better than he. When on earth, he had been the terror of Attica, where, as a brigand, he had robbed and murdered with relentless cruelty.
Theseus, whom Hercules was bent on freeing from his torment, had met and killed this robber-assassin, and Jupiter, for his sins, decreed that the malefactor should continually be rolling up a hill in Tartarus a heavy stone which, when with incredible pains he had brought nearly to the top, always rolled back again, and he had to begin over and over again the heart-breaking ascent.
Some distance from Sisyphus Hercules came upon Tantalus, who, in the flesh, had been King of Phrygia, but who now, weak from hunger and parched with thirst, was made to stand to his chin in water with branches of tempting luscious fruit hanging ripe over his head. When he essayed to drink the water it always went from him, and when he stretched out his hand to pluck the fruit, back the branches sprang out of reach.
In addition an immense rock, hung over his head, threatened every moment to crush him.
It is said that Tantalus, when in the flesh, had betrayed the secrets of the gods and also committed other great crimes. For this he was "tantalized" with food and drink, which, seeming always to be within his reach, ever mocked his hopes by eluding his grasp.
The groans of a crowd of disheveled women next attracted the affrighted attention of Hercules. They were forty-nine of the fifty daughters of Danaus, King of Argos, who, at the instigation of their father, had killed their husbands because Danaus thought they were conspiring to depose him.