IXION was son of Phlegyas, king of the Lapithæ in Thessaly. He married Dia, daughter of Deioneus, whose consent he obtained by magnificent promises, but, failing afterwards to perform them, Deioneus seized on his horses. Ixion dissembled his resentment, and inviting Deioneus to a banquet, received him in an apartment previously prepared, from which, by withdrawing a door, his father-in-law was thrown into a furnace of fire. Stung, however, with remorse, and universally despised, Ixion was overpowered with frenzy, till Jupiter at length re-admitted him to favor, and not only took him into heaven, but intrusted him also with his counsels. So ungrateful, notwithstanding, did Ixion become, as to attempt the chastity of Juno herself. This so incensed Jupiter that the angry deity hurled him into Tartărus, and fixed him on a wheel encompassed with serpents, which was doomed to revolve without intermission. SALMONEUS, king of Elis, was son of Æolus, (not he who was king of the winds, but another of the name) and Anarete. Not satisfied with an earthly crown, Salmoneus panted after divine honors; and, in order that the people might esteem him a god, he built a brazen bridge over the city, and drove his chariot along it, imitating, by this noise, Jupiter's thunder; at the same time throwing flaming torches among the spectators below, to represent his lightning, by which many were killed. Jupiter, in resentment of this insolence, precipitated the ambitious mortal into hell, where, according to Virgil, Æneas saw him. SISIPHUS, _or_ SISYPHUS, a descendant of Æŏlus, married Merope, one of the Pleiades, who bore him Glaucus. He resided at Ephyra, in Peloponnesus, and was conspicuous for his craft. Some say he was a Trojan secretary, who was punished for discovering secrets of state; whilst others contend that he was a notorious robber killed by Theseus. However, all the poets agree that he was punished in Tartărus for his crimes, by rolling a great stone to the top of a hill, which constantly recoiling and rolling down again, 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 Tantălus only an emblem of the covetous."