49 Murderous Brides Were Condemned to an Eternity of Hopeless Labor
In Greek legend, the Danaides were the fifty daughters of Danaus, king of Libya, and a main figure in the founding myth of the city state of Argos, in the Peloponnese. Danaus was the twin brother of the mythical king Aegyptus of Egypt, and the twins had some serious sibling rivalry going on. Aegyptus had fifty sons, and when he commanded that his twin’s fifty daughters be married to his sons, Danaus declined. Instead, he loaded them in a boat, and oared by his daughters, fled across the sea to Argos. The Argives were impressed by the arrival of fifty beauties rowing a boat, and even more so by their father, whom they made their king.
Aegyptus did not give up, however, and sent his fifty sons to Argos to claim their brides. To spare the local Argives from the ravages of war, Danaus reluctantly consented to wed his daughters to his twin sons. Wedding plans were made, and Danaus arranged a feast for the event. However, before the wedding, Danaus gathered his daughters around him, and passed a dagger to each, with instructions to murder their husbands as soon as they were alone with them.
Disobeying one’s parents was a great sin in Ancient Greece, so all the daughters, except one who took pity on her new husband after he respected her desire to remain a virgin, murdered their spouses on the wedding night. They then cut off their heads and buried them near a lake south of Argos. Danaus hauled the daughter who had disobeyed him before a court, but her husband intervened and murdered Danaus in revenge for the deaths of his 49 brothers. He and his wife then ruled Argos, inaugurating a dynasty that ran that city for centuries.
As to the 49 daughters who had murdered their husbands, they remarried, choosing new mates from the winners of a footrace. The gods however punished them by sending them to Tartarus, the Ancient Greek version of hell – an abyss where the wicked are subjected to suffering and torment. There, the 49 daughters were condemned to spend an eternity of ceaseless and hopeless labor, reminiscent of Sisyphus. They were to carry jugs of water to fill a bathtub to wash away their sins, but the bathtub could never be filled because it had a hole in the bottom.