Tityus was another god punished by crucifixion, with vultures pecking at his liver in Tartarus, but this time he was spreadeagled and pinned on the ground, the oldest form of the punishment. This was for trying to have illicit sex with Leto—the liver was thought of as the centre of sexual power. He was a giant and a son of Gaia, so must have been a Titan, as his name might imply. Stealing a sexual pleasure from a goddess or revealing sexual indiscretions of a god seem to be euphemistic ways of hiding the revelation of divine secrets to humanity. In other words, he sounds like a disguised or older version of Prometheus.

Another suffering god was Tantalus, who was supposed to have been a king of Lydia and therefore extremely rich, blessed by his mother, the Titaness, Pluto (wealth). Tantalus, being so favoured by the gods, became immortal by dining with them on nectar and ambrosia, and one story of his punishment is that he served up to the gods in return the boiled corpse of his son Pelops. The Gods detected the nature of the meal and he was punished for it. Only Demeter anguishing over the fate of Kore, absentmindedly chewed a shoulder. The shoulders of sacrifices were always reserved for the king or the priests as they were in the Jewish religion (Lev 7:32; 11:21). Those who dine with gods are gods, so Tantalus was really a non-native Greek god popular enough to have been once acceptable to the Greeks. Sacrifices were offered as broth, not roast, in countries influenced by the Persian religion, or perhaps in ancient Indo-European tradition.

There are other, more “tantalizing” myths however. Some place him in Corinth not Lydia, suggesting he might be associated with the legends of Sisyphus with whom he is punished in Tartarus. Like Prometheus, he stole from the gods to give to mortals. He betrayed to humanity certain divine secrets that he heard at the dinner table with them, and also stole nectar and ambrosia, the food of the gods, which confers immortality. There is a strong hint here of a eucharistic type of meal believed to confer immortality on to its partakers. When the gods found out he intended to benefit mortals he was punished for it. The Greek gods reserved immortality to themselves.

Because his secrets came from dining with the gods, he was forbidden to eat or drink, even though food and drink were tantalisingly available. This saviour of humanity was obviously crucified! He is hung on the branch of a fruit tree! It is perhaps a tree of life because it has multiple fruits growing in it—the tree of life has twelve—and is suspended over a lake. He is depicted peering through the greenery in abject terror. The level of the lake slowly rose up to his chin such that he could bend his head for a gulp of water, but each time he did, the water level fell away to expose the muddy bottom. Each time he bent his head to bite a fruit, a gust of wind bounced it from his mouth. So, he suffered everlasting torments of hunger and thirst. Jesus was, of course, tormented with gall to drink when he thirsted.

In another myth, Tantalus is punished by having a large rock suspended above his head threatening to fall upon him at every moment, so he suffers an eternity of immediate fear. The rock, like that of Sisyphus is the solar disc, showing that Tantalus was a sun god. A scholiast on Pindar’s Odes declares this to be the case.

A sacrificial victim to the sun god will have been put in a cage decorated with the fruit of the earth and dropped into a lake as the canonical myth suggests, or burnt on a pyre as was Tantalus’s son, whence the real reason for his fear. In fact, the folk custom of the Jack in the Green (Green George) in which an effigy is first ducked and then burnt will be the relic of the custom. In Medieval times, at May Day, the victim was encased in a wooden cage decorated with holly, ivy, spring flowers and fluttering ribbons. The tradition was maintained by chimney sweeps which suggests the fate of the original victim. The fearful image of the green man sprouting leaves will be the same. The man was not originally sprouting leaves but looking through them in terror.

Yet another benefactor of humanity punished in hell was Sisyphus, who was condemned to rolling a large stone up a hill in Tartarus, but each time it rolled back again. Sisyphus who is supposed to have founded Corinth and the Isthmian games, revealed one of Zeus’s amorous affairs, but this will be another derogation of the original in which he aimed to pass divine secrets to mortals. Zeus sent Thanatos (death) to embrace him. Sisyphus however, tricked and overpowered Thanatos, and chained him up, so that he could not embrace people, and human beings became immortal like gods. Here again is a strong hint of the god promising eternal life to his devotees. Mars, who had a vested interest in people killing each other, set Thanatos free again and despatched Sisyphus to Tartarus, probably signifying that the religion was forcibly suppressed. A saviour of the human race, actually saving them from death, is punished by a jealous patriarchal god. Sisyphus was read by the Greeks as including the word “sophos”, “wisdom”, and they took it to mean “crafty”, in the sense of “cunning” but originally will have meant “clever” or “thoughtful” like Prometheus. Curiously Jesus is often identified with Wisdom, though Wisdom was a goddess, Sophia.

The punishment of Sisyphus reflects his original nature as a sun god, presumably of Corinth, where there was a temple to Helios. The time spent by Paul at Corinth might not have been purely fortuitous. The cult was based upon the Hittite sun god, Tesup, and will have been brought into Corinth by traders from Rhodes where Tesup was worshipped. The boulder Sisyphus rolls up the hill stands for the disc of the sun, and Sisyphus was the god who rolled the solar disc across the vault of the heavens, having to begin his endless task anew each morning because overnight the sun has returned to the east. Sisyphus and Ixion (another, sun god—see below) were put next to each other in Hades, suggesting an association.

In his myth, Sisyphus was a cattle owner, another characteristic of some sun gods, who were often represented as bulls (compare Mithras). He is the parallel of Laban in Genesis(29-30) from whom Jacob tricked cattle. Laban means white, a colour associated with the sun.

The end of the story of Sisyphus is even more revealing. Being so wise, he tells his wife not to bury his body when he dies. This is a mythical explanation of the corpses of crucified victims being left to hang. Arriving in Hades, he complains to Persephone, the queen of the underworld, that he had suffered an injustice by not being buried and asked for a three days respite to correct it. Persephone agreed but Sisyphus had no intention of keeping his three day promise. It could not work. Omniscient gods could not be tricked so simply, and Hermes was quickly sent to inflict permanent death on Sisyphus. Paul addresses the Greeks (Acts 17:2-34) referring to an altar inscribed “To an Unknown God.” Luke puts this speech in the Areopagus in Athens immediately before Paul departs to Corinth. Perhaps Luke was misinformed or has used poetic license and the altar was to Sisyphus, whose name was unmentionable and whose tomb was unknown—in Corinth.

What is interesting is the reversal of myths like that of Jesus where the god dies for three days. Here the god is reprieved from death for three days. It might be simply an expression of the ancient belief that the soul does not finally leave the corpse until after three days, or it might be part of the denigration of the Corinthian god by inverting what was a resurrection after three days. The Hellenes will have denigrated the Corinthian god for racial reasons, they disliked the importation of a foreign god into the heart of the Greek peninsular, and so had him punished by their own gods.

The Greeks eventually accepted foreign gods—including gods who died for three days—and some aspired to Olympus, but these sinning gods punished by Zeus in Tartarus were pre-Olympian, or gods of rebellious nations seen as rivals to the Olympians, or perhaps the Greeks were suppressing mysteries except their favoured ones of Eleusis, and a few other privileged places. Only Tantalus and Ixion of these saviours of humanity are still seen as crucified, but the common themes among them imply that it, and a communion meal conferring immortality, are likely to have been in the original myths, now suppressed. Aesculapius was a sun god as his parents prove. He was born of Apollo and Coronis. Zeus raised Aesculapius from the dead and restored him as a god. Before that Zeus slew him with a bolt lest the whole race of mortals should escape death. Aesculapius had raised so many from the dead that Pluto thought he would have no dead people to rule. Here is the same myth of immortality, first suppressed then admitted as legitimate.