Every mythical figure is compelled to do the same thing over and over again. Each of them is constituted by repetition: its failure would mean their end. They all bear features of the fate which, in the myths of punishment in the underworld, is meted out by Olympian judgment to Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the Danaids. They are figures of compulsion: the horrors they commit are the curse which has fallen on them. Mythical inevitability is defined by the equivalence between the curse, the abominable act which expiates it, and the guilt arising from that act, which reproduces the curse. All law in
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