Atlas (mythology)

“ By the golden apples that grew in the gardens of the Hesperides, the Phœnicians expressed the rich and beneficial commerce they had in the Mediterranean, which being carried on during three months only of the year, gave rise to the fable of the Hesperian sisters. The most usual way of representing Atlas, among the ancient artists, was as supporting a globe; for the old poets commonly refer to this attitude in speaking of him. ”

“ He was a king of Mauritania, the son of the Titan Jap ́etus, and the nymph Clym ́ene; he was, therefore, brother of Prometheus. He is represented as sustaining the heavens on his shoulders. Atlas had been warned that he would suffer much from a son of Jupiter. When Perseus was returning from the conquest of the Gorgons, he arrived in the dominions of Atlas, of whom he claimed the rites of hospitality, declaring at the same time his divine parentage. The king, remembering the prophecy with regard to Jupiter’s offspring, repulsed him harshly. ”

“ This mode of worship among the Atlantian betrays a great antiquity; as the temple seems to have been merely a vast hollow in the side of the mountain; and to have had in it neither image, nor pillar, nor stone, nor any material object of adoration: [673] Εστι δε Ατλας ορος κοιλον, επιεικως ὑψηλον.—Τουτο Λιβυων και ἱερον, και θεος, και ὁρκος, και αγαλμα. This Atlas (of which I have been speaking) is a mountain with a cavity, and of a tolerable height, which the natives esteem both as a temple and a Deity: and it is the great object by which they swear; and to which they pay their devotions. ”

“ Ans. By his wife Peli ́one, he had seven daughters, who were called Pleiades; they were changed into stars, and form the beautiful group which we admire in the constellation Taurus. Atlas had seven other daughters who underwent the same transformation; they were placed in the head of Taurus, and were called by the Greeks, Hyades, from a word which signifies “to rain.”
The Hesperides, or Western Maidens, were three celebrated nymphs, concerning whose parentage ancient writers are not agreed. ”

“ There are many things to connect the mythology of the Gothic nations with Atlantis; they had, as we have seen, flood legends; their gods Krodo and Satar were the Chronos and Saturn of Atlantis; their Baal was the Bel of the Phoenicians, who were closely connected with Poseidon and Atlas; and, as we shall see hereafter, their language has a distinct relationship with the tongues of the Arabians, Cushites, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians. ”

“ But by the time of Herodotus (iv. 184) , a mountain is suggested as best suited to hold up the heavens, and the name of Atlas is transferred to a hill in the N.W. of Africa. Then the name is traced to a king of that district, rich in flocks and herds, and owning the garden of the Hesperides. Finally, Atlas was explained as the name of a primitive astronomer. He was the father of the Pleiades and Hyades. ”

“ Again, figures in the form of men supporting mutules or coronae, we term "telamones"—the reasons why or wherefore they are so called are not found in any story—but the Greeks name them ἁτλανες. For Atlas is described in story as holding up the firmament because, through his vigorous intelligence and ingenuity, he was the first to cause men to be taught about the courses of the sun and moon, and the laws governing the revolutions of all the constellations. ”

“ Good-natured, as giants proverbially are, Atlas threw the apples on the grass beside him, and assumed the incumbent weight; but Hercules, instead of preparing to resume it, picked up the apples, leaving Atlas alone, in the same plight as he had found him, there to remain until some more compassionate hero should come and set him free.
“There Atlas, son of great Iapetus,
With head inclined and ever-during arms,
Sustains the spacious heavens.” ”

“ Thus already in classic times men were declaring that Atlas was a great astronomer who taught the use of the sphere, and was therefore represented with the world resting on his shoulders. To such a pass had come the decay of myth into commonplace, that the great Heaven-god of the Aryan race, the living personal Heaven himself, Zeus the Almighty, was held to have been a king of Krete, and the Kretans could show to wondering strangers his sepulchre, with the very name of the great departed inscribed upon it. ”

“ History and Exploration.—The name Atlas given to these mountains by Europeans—but never used by the native races—is derived from that of the mythical Greek god represented as carrying the globe on his shoulders, and applied to the high and distant mountains of the west, where Atlas was supposed to dwell. From time immemorial the Atlas have been the home of Berber races, and those living in the least accessible regions have retained a measure of independence throughout their recorded history. ”

“ All these and their descendants were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in the other direction [Pg 354] over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas had a numerous and honorable family, and his eldest branch always retained the kingdom, which the eldest son handed on to his eldest for many generations ”

“ It is evident that we have to thank the Phœnicians for bringing one great mountain so prominently before the Greeks that alone of all mountains in their literature it is endued with personality. But it is lamentable to observe how the affairs of Atlas, once released 76 from Phœnician control, descend into the bourgeois rut of semi-divine nonentity. He proceeded to marry a nymph, who bore him seven other nymphs, of whom Maia, mother of Hermes, is alone conspicuous. ”

“ How is the heaven held up, the great heavy dome as he imagines it? It is Atlas who does so. There is a god of the Autumn and Spring, of the Summer and Winter. So he personifies all forces he perceives but does not understand. ”

“ LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS.
The sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesiodic theogony, are Atlas, Menœtius, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus. [160] Of these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, and even he not as the son of Iapetus: the latter himself is named in the Iliad as existing in Tartarus along with Kronos. The Homeric Atlas “knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps by himself those tall pillars which hold the heaven apart from the earth.” ”

“ Considering that, in the Romans’ time, Pliny, quoting from the lost journal of Suetonius Paulinus, informs us that the Atlas Mountains were full of elephants, and swarmed with wild beasts of every kind, who took refuge in the impenetrable forests with which those mountains then were clad, it is strange to find the Atlas of to-day so largely a treeless and a gameless land. ”

“ Diodorus says in effect that Atlas had taught astronomy to Hercules, but our author confounds the three princes of this name, and made a mistake in citing Lucas de Tuy (continuer of the Chronicle of Isidore of Seville) as saying that Atlas was the first who invented the art of painting in the city of Corinth. The origin of this art was unknown to the ancients. It is true that Sicyon and Corinth disputed the glory of the discovery, but the discoverer according to most of the ancient authors was Cleanthes of Corinth and not Atlas, as Azurara says. ”

“ The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old Continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and a universal knowledge, and especially a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean; for both Continents bore Races instructed by divine Masters, and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reäppearance above the waters. ”

“ Atlas was the king, or god, of Atlantis. In the old time all kings were gods. They are something more than men, to the multitude, even yet.
And when we reach "Ragnarok" in these Gothic legends, when the jaw of the wolf Fenris reached from the earth to the sun, and he vomits fire and poison, and when Surt, and all the forces of Muspel, "ride over Bifrost, it breaks to pieces." That is to say, in this last great catastrophe of the earth, the ridge of land that led from the British Islands to Atlantis goes down for ever. ”

“ There is a large class of ancient artistic conceptions, freely copied by the moderns, not anatomically monstrous, but physically and physiologically impossible—such as Atlas supporting the globe on his shoulders ”

“ So did Atlas the Titan become Atlas the Mountain, and still his head, white-crowned with snow, and his great shoulder far up in misty clouds, would seem to hold apart the earth and the sky.
Then Perseus again took flight, and in his flight he passed over many lands and suffered weariness and want, and sometimes felt his faith growing low. Yet ever he sped on, hoping ever, enduring ever. In Egypt he had rest and was fed and honoured by the people of the land, who were fain to keep him to be one of their gods. ”

“ We had ascended several hundred feet, and were looking about for plants among rocks to the left of the path, when some faint sound made us look up, and we descried, amid the rain and mist, a party of men and laden mules descending towards us down the steep ravine. There was some obvious awkwardness in the impending encounter of three Englishmen, utterly ignorant of the native tongue, with a set of wild mountaineers of the Atlas, in a spot where no stranger had ever before been seen. ”

“ This conception is perhaps the first of these guesses through which the Greek mind attempted to explain the apparent fixity of the earth. To ask what supports the earth in space is most natural, but the answer given by Anaximander, like that more familiar Greek solution which transformed the cone, or cylinder, into the giant Atlas, is but another illustration of that substitution of unwarranted inference for scientific induction which we have already so often pointed out as characteristic of the primitive stages of thought. ”

“ Hyginus says that Atlas assisted the giants in their wars against the gods, for which Jupiter compelled him to bear the heavens on his shoulders. The fable that Atlas supported the heavens on his back, arises from his fondness for astronomy, and his often frequenting elevated places and mountains, whence he might observe the heavenly bodies. ”

“ On his way he turned Atlas to stone (and you can see the Atlas mountains to this day) , either out of pity for his sufferings—he had to hold up all heaven on his head, and heaven was, as in early Christendom, completely solid—or, as some say, in revenge for some trivial rudeness. If so, it is a regrettable blot on his otherwise unsullied escutcheon; for even Medusa had longed to die. Flying on, he next beheld Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus king of Ethiopia, bound to a rock and waiting to be devoured by a dragon. ”

“ At his nearer approach, Atlas held up his hand, in which Hercules could perceive three magnificent golden apples, as big as pumpkins, all hanging from one branch.
"I am glad to see you again," shouted Hercules, when the giant was within hearing. "So you have got the golden apples?"
"Certainly, certainly," answered Atlas; "and very fair apples they are. I took the finest that grew on the tree, I assure you. Ah! it is a beautiful spot, that garden of the Hesperides. Yes; and the dragon with a hundred heads is a sight worth any man's seeing. ”

“ Accordingly, without more words, the sky was shifted from the shoulders of Atlas and placed upon those of Hercules.
When this was safely accomplished, the first thing that the giant did was to stretch himself; and you may imagine what a prodigious spectacle he was then. Next, he slowly lifted one of his feet out of the forest that had grown up around it; then the other. Then, all at once he began to caper, and leap, and dance for joy at his freedom; flinging himself nobody knows how high into the air, and floundering down again with a shock that made the earth tremble. ”

“ So Hercules clambered to the highest peak he could find, and Atlas, slowly bending, gradually and carefully let down the sky upon the head and shoulders of the hero. Then, heaving a deep roar of relief, he strode into the sea.
It was surely the strangest plight in which a mortal ever found himself—standing on a mountain-peak, and, by the strength of his own shoulders, keeping the skies from falling. He was answerable for the safety of the whole world: the burden of the entire universe was laid upon the shoulders of one man. They were strong enough to bear it ”

“ Such a person, if he is exalted to the highest honors, is, in his own imagination, like Atlas bearing the terraqueous globe upon his shoulders, and like Phœbus, with his horses, carrying the sun around the world. ”

“ The Atlas, which shall be on the left of Night, you shall represent as a Mountain, with the breast, arms, and all the upper part of the body, that of a strong, muscular, bearded man, in the act of supporting the Heavens, which is his usual attitude. Lower down, and opposite to the Vigilance which we have placed beneath Aurora, should be Sleep ”

“ Then Mercury came and gave Perseus a sword of light that would cleave all on whom it might fall, lent him his own winged sandals, and told him to go first to the nymphs of the Graiæ, the Gorgons’ sisters, and make them tell him the way.
So the young hero went by land and sea, still westwards, to the very borders of the world, where stands the giant of the west, Atlas, holding up the great vault of the skies on his broad shoulders. ”