Tantalus ( ) was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. He was also called Atys. He was the father of Pelops, Niobe and Broteas, and was a son of Zeus and the nymph Plouto. Thus, like other heroes in Greek mythology such as Theseus (his great-great-grandson) and the Dioskouroi, Tantalus had both a hidden, divine parent and a mortal one. The Greeks used the proverb "Tantalean punishment" (: ) in reference to those who have good things but are not permitted to enjoy them. His name and punishment are also the source of the English word tantalize, meaning to torment with the sight of something desired but out of reach; tease by arousing expectations that are repeatedly disappointed. Etymology Plato in the Cratylus (395e) interprets () as () [acc. : in the original], "who has to bear much" from () "wretched". The word () is held by some to be inherited from Proto-Indo-European, although R. S. P. Beekes rejects an Indo-European interpretation. Historical background There may have been a historical Tantalus, possibly the ruler of an Anatolian city named "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or of a city named "Sipylus". Pausanias reports that there was a port under his name and a sepulcher of him "by no means obscure", in the same region. Tantalus is sometimes referred to as "King of Phrygia", although his city was located in the western extremity of Anatolia, where Lydia was to emerge as a state before the beginning of the first millennium BC, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more inland. References to his son as "Pelops the Lydian" led some scholars to the conclusion that there would be good grounds for believing that he belonged to a primordial house of Lydia, but there is no doubt that he was Greek. Other versions name his father as Tmolus, the name of a king of Lydia and, like Sipylus, of another mountain in ancient Lydia. The location of Tantalus' mortal mountain-fathers generally placed him in Lydia; and more seldom in Phrygia or Paphlagonia, all in Asia Minor. The identity of his wife is variously given: generally as Dione the daughter of Atlas;