Atlas

Atlas
Farnese Atlas, a 3rd century Roman copy of a Hellenistic work (Naples)
Abode	Western edge of Gaia (the Earth)
Parents	Iapetus and Asia
Children	Hesperides, Hyades, Hyas, Pleiades, Calypso, Dione and Maera location = mt.Tamalpais

In Greek mythology, Atlas (/ˈætləs/; Ancient Greek: Ἄτλας) was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Although associated with various places, he became commonly identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa (Modern-day Morocco and Algeria).^[1] Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia^[2] or Klyménē (Κλυμένη):^[3]

Now Iapetus took to wife the neat-ankled maid Clymene, daughter of Ocean, and went up with her into one bed. And she bare him a stout-hearted son, Atlas: also she bare very glorious Menoetius and clever Prometheus, full of various wiles, and scatter-brained Epimetheus.

—Hesiod, Theogony 507–11

In contexts where a Titan and a Titaness are assigned each of the seven planetary powers, Atlas is paired with Phoebe and governs the moon.^{[not in citation given][4]} He had three brothers: Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius.^[5]

Hyginus emphasises the primordial nature of Atlas by making him the son of Aether and Gaia.^[6]

The first part of the term "Atlantic Ocean" refers to "Sea of Atlas", the term "Atlantis" refers to "island of Atlas".

Etymology

Sculpture of Atlas, Praza do Toural, Santiago de Compostela.

The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain and still debated. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring",^[7] which suggested to George Doig^[8] that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλήναι "to endure"; Doig offers the further possibility that Virgil was aware of Strabo's remark that the native North African name for this mountain was Douris. Since the Atlas mountains rise in the region inhabited by Berbers, it has been suggested that the name might be taken from one of the Berber languages, specifically adrar, Berber for "mountain".^[9]

Some modern linguists derive it and its Greek root from the Proto-Indo-European root *tel, 'to uphold, support'; others^{[citation needed]} suggest that it is a pre-Indo-European name. Others hold it is pre-Indo-European, or Pelasgian in origin, associated with the word "thalassa", meaning "sea".

Punishment

Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their war against the Olympians, the Titanomachy. His brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus weighed the odds and betrayed the other Titans by forming an alliance with the Olympians. When the Titans were defeated, many of them (including Menoetius) were confined to Tartarus, but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of Gaia (the Earth) and hold up Uranus (the Sky) on his shoulders, to prevent the two from resuming their primordial embrace. Thus, he was Atlas Telamon, "enduring Atlas," and became a doublet of Koios, the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve.^[10]

A common interpretation today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but Classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial spheres, not a globe; the solidity of the marble globe born by the renowned Farnese Atlas may have aided the conflation, reinforced in the 16th century by the developing usage of atlas to describe a corpus of terrestrial maps.

Greco-Buddhist (1-200 BC) Atlas, supporting a Buddhist monument, Hadda, Afghanistan.

Variations

In a late story,^[11] a giant named Atlas tried to drive a wandering Perseus from the place where the Atlas mountains now stand. In Ovid's telling,^[12] Perseus revealed Medusa's head, turning Atlas to stone (those very mountains) when he tried to drive him away, as a prophecy said that a son of Zeus would steal the golden apples. As is not uncommon in myth, this account cannot be reconciled with the far more common stories of Atlas' dealings with Heracles, who was Perseus' great-grandson.

According to Plato, the first king of Atlantis was also named Atlas, but that Atlas was a son of Poseidon and the mortal woman Cleito.^[13] A euhemerist origin for Atlas was as a legendary Atlas, king of Mauretania, an expert astronomer. Some say he is even the god of astronomy.

Encounter with Heracles

One of the Twelve Labors of the hero Heracles was to fetch some of the golden apples which grow in Hera's garden, tended by Atlas' daughters, the Hesperides, and guarded by the dragon Ladon. Heracles went to Atlas and offered to hold up the heavens while Atlas got the apples from his daughters.

Upon his return with the apples, however, Atlas attempted to trick Heracles into carrying the sky permanently by offering to deliver the apples himself, as anyone who purposely took the burden must carry it forever, or until someone else took it away. Heracles, suspecting Atlas did not intend to return, pretended to agree to Atlas' offer, asking only that Atlas take the sky again for a few minutes so Heracles could rearrange his cloak as padding on his shoulders. When Atlas set down the apples and took the heavens upon his shoulders again, Heracles took the apples and ran away.

In some versions,^[14] Heracles instead built the two great Pillars of Hercules to hold the sky away from the earth, liberating Atlas much as he liberated Prometheus.

Etruscan Aril

The identifying name Aril is inscribed on two 5th-century Etruscan bronze items, a mirror from Vulci and a ring from an unknown site.^[15] Both objects depict the encounter with Atlas of Hercle, the Etruscan Heracles, identified by the inscription; they represent rare instances where a figure from Greek mythology is imported into Etruscan mythology, but the name is not. The Etruscan name aril is etymologically independent.

Children

Lee Lawrie's colossal bronze Atlas, Rockefeller Center, New York.

Sources describe Atlas as the father, by different goddesses, of numerous children, mostly daughters. Some of these are assigned conflicting or overlapping identities or parentage in different sources.

• By Hesperis:

• the Hesperides^[16]

• By Pleione (or Aethra^[17]):

• the Hyades^[18]
• a son, Hyas^[18]
• the Pleiades^[19]

• By one or more unspecified goddesses:

• Calypso^[20]
• Dione^[21]
• Maera^[22]

Cultural influence

Atlas supports the terrestrial globe on a building in Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia.

• Atlas' best-known cultural association is in cartography. The first publisher to associate the Titan Atlas with a group of maps was the print-seller Antonio Lafreri, on the engraved title-page he applied to his ad hoc assemblages of maps, Tavole Moderne Di Geografia De La Maggior Parte Del Mondo Di Diversi Autori (1572);^[23] however, he did not use the word "atlas" in the title of his work, an innovation of Gerardus Mercator, who dedicated his "atlas" specifically "to honour the Titan, Atlas, King of Mauretania, a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer"; he actually depicted the astronomer king.

• Atlas continues to be a commonly used icon in western culture, as a symbol of strength or stoic endurance. He is often shown kneeling on one knee while supporting an enormous round globe on his back and shoulders. The globe originally represented the celestial sphere of ancient astronomy, rather than the earth. The use of the term atlas as a name for collections of terrestrial maps and the modern understanding of the earth as a sphere have combined to inspire the many depictions of Atlas' burden as the earth.

• Atlas is seen on the cover of Van Halen's album "5150".

• Atlas was used as a symbol in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is used as a metaphor for the people who produced the most in society, and therefore "hold up the world" in a metaphorical sense.

Heracles and Atlas, on a vase by the Athena Painter, c. 490-480 BC (National Archeological Museum, Athens).

• Atlas appears in the Hercules episode "Hercules and the Prince of Thrace" voiced by Thomas Lennon.

• In the book series Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Atlas was the general of the Titans army in their war with the Olympian gods. When the gods won the war Zeus sentenced Atlas to hold the weight of the sky on his shoulders to keep it from crashing with the earth. In the third book titled The Titan's Curse, he tricked Artemis into holding the sky for him while he became general again. However, Percy and Artemis's Hunters managed to get Atlas back under the sky where he was before.

• In the World's Strongest Man competitions, competitors have to lift huge spherical stone boulders, known as the Atlas Stones, onto pedestals.

• The first cervical vertebrae, one of only two specifically named vertebrae, takes its name from the eponymous Atlas, since it supports the head as Atlas supported the celestial globe.

• One of the seven detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been named the ATLAS experiment, in the rough tradition of particle physics to name experiments after Greek deities.

• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, there is a item called the "Atlas Foot", Pit (or Fighters and/or Dark Pit in multiplayer modes) can use which calls forth a giant foot (which isn't the actual foot of Atlas) to crush Pit's enemies (other players in multiplayer). Their is also a Club type weapon called the "Atlas Club" which resembles a giant fist. Both of these appear to be inspired or apparently based off Atlas himself.

See also

• Atlas (architecture)
• Farnese Atlas

Notes

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Atlas (mythology) (category)

• Origin of the term "Atlas" as a name for a collection of maps
• Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, London: Penguin, 1955; Baltimore: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-001026-2
• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Atlas"