Tantalus (TAN-ta-luss) was a Greek king (and a son of Zeus) who thought he could fool the gods. When Zeus invited Tantalus to come up on Mount Olympos and eat dinner with the gods, Tantalos would steal the gods’ special food (ambrosia and nectar) to give to his friends back on earth!

And then he did something worse than that. He invited the gods over for dinner at HIS house, and tried to trick them into eating human flesh. Tantalos had his own son, Pelops, cut up into pieces and boiled in the stew. Most of the gods figured out what was happening and didn’t eat any, but Demeter was so worried about Persephone, who had been kidnapped, that she ate a little piece of Pelops’ shoulder.

for this crime, Zeus himself killed Tantalus, and Tantalos had to spend his whole afterlife in the underworld, Hades. His torture was that he had to stand forever waist-deep in a pool of water, with a fruit tree dangling branches full of ripe fruit over his head. He got terribly hungry and thirsty, but whenever he bent down to drink the water, it would all magically drain away, and whenever he reached up to pick some fruit, the branches would lift up out of his reach. But no matter how hungry or thirsty he got, he was already dead, so he could never die.