A tantalizing story from the acient Greeks

 One of the stranger stories in Greek mythology is about Tantalos, a mortal who got to be an intimate friend of Zeus.

Tantalos was invited to dine on Olympus and returned the social favor at one of his estates. He got concerned about whether there was enough food to go around and so he boiled his son Pelops in the stew.

The gods and goddesses were outraged — except for Demeter. Distracted by grief at the loss of her daughter Persephone, Demeter cleaned up the left the shoulder.

Zeus brought back Pelops by collecting the leftovers and boiling them again in the same cauldron. Gods and goddesses provided the breath of life and some other essentials.

Hephaistos, the craftsman among the gods, had to make a new shoulder blade out of ivory. Otherwise, Pelops was as good as new.

Zeus punished Tantalos by putting him in a creek under the overhanging branches of a wondrous fruit tree. But every time he tried to get a handful of water or a piece of fruit, it slipped away.

I heard my father and his friends use the word “tantalizing.” I don’t hear that word anymore.

The Greeks used the myth to talk about people who have things they can’t enjoy. Some of the tales get to interesting questions about what we humans really do have.

No two versions of the story agree, which is one of the things I like about the Greeks. If someone didn’t like a story he heard from his parents, he changed it.

• Robert Graves’s account is in The Greek Myths: 2; Penguin Books, 1968, pp. 25-31. Graves says the whole business about “tantalizing” is a misreading of the myth: Tantalos was in agony not from thirst but from fear of drowning.