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Saturday 21 January 2012 at 11:47 | By: Amandine Ronny Montegerai

Atlas (mythology)






For other uses, see Atlas (disambiguation).
In Greek mythology, Atlas (English pronunciation: /ˈætləs/, 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.In Greek mythology, Atlas (English pronunciation: /ˈætləs/, 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]
—Hesiod, Theogony 507ff.
In contexts where a Titan and a Titaness are assigned each of the seven planetary powers, Atlas is paired with Phoebe and governs themoon.[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 wasDouris.[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 borne 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.

Images Atlas


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. Because anyone who purposely took the burden must carry it forever, or until someone else took it away from them. 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.


Atlas
Farnese Atlas, a 3rd century Roman copy of a Hellenistic work (Naples)
Farnese Atlas, a 3rd century Roman copy of aHellenistic work (Naples)
AbodeWestern edge of Gaia (the Earth)
ParentsIapetus and Asia
Children location = mt.Tamalpais

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 one or more unspecified goddesses:

Cultural influence

Main article: Atlas (disambiguation)

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.
Mickey à travers les siècles (Mickey Through the Centuries) was a French comic strip series published in the early 1970s featuring Mickey Mouse as a time traveller. In one such adventure, he assisted Heracles in his twelve tasks. The story gave an euhemerist spin on the legend of Atlas, depicted as an ordinaryking with a passion for geography. He builds a large globe representing the Earth and Heracles helps him carry it to a suitable location. The Hesperides are his daughters and the golden apples are oranges.
Atlas is one of the 6 heroes that make up the acronym "Shazam." (the complete acronym stands for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury). The acronym is the name of a fictional ancient Egyptian wizard who grants to young Billy Batson the power to transform into the superhero Captain Marvelupon saying his name. Among the powers granted by the ancient heroes in the acronym is the stamina of Atlas. This character was created by writer Bil Parker and artistC.C. Beck, first appeared in Whiz Comics #2 from Fawcett Publications, and is now owned by DC Comics.
In the Belgian comics series Scrameustache, the titular hero often meets god-like figures such as Cupid and Atlas. In Le Réveil du Mirmidon (French for "The Mirmidon Awakes"), published in 2001, Atlas exiles seven dwarf-like gardeners and their wives for neglecting the tree with the Hesperides' golden apples. Atlas is depicted as a bearded giant in an astronaut's suit and with his own spaceship, though he also appears to have magical powers.

Heracles and Atlas, on a vase by theAthena Painter, c. 490-480 BC (National Archeological Museum, Athens)
In the French-Japanese animated series Ulysses 31, which retells many Greek myths in a futuristic setting, Atlas appears depicted faithfully to his mythological self.
In Percy Jackson and The Olympians, a book series by Rick Riordan, 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, 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 reimagined Battlestar Galactica universe, Atlas was a Lord of Kobol who held up Kobol, the original homeworld of humanity, on his shoulders.
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.
In the God of War II video game, Atlas is seen atop of the Underworld, holding the world on his shoulders. He assists Kratos on his quest to the Temple of the Sisters by granting him passage through the Great Chasm and giving Kratos the remnants of his magic, granting Kratos "Atlas Quake".
One of the six 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.
What the Water Gave Me, a song by band Florence and the Machine makes a reference to him.
Los Angeles,California Alternative Band OTEP Made Reference In 2004 Sophomore Album "House Of Secrets" In Track 3 "Buried Alive" "I ate the spine of atlas, Now The world Is Crushing Me"

See also

Notes



  1. ^ Smith, "Atlas"
  2. ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke i.2.3.
  3. ^ Hesiod (Theogony 359 [as a daughter of Tethys], 507) gives her name as Clymene butApollodorus (1.8) gives instead the name Asia, as does Lycophron (1411). It is possible that the name Asia became preferred over Hesiod's Clymene to avoid confusion with what must be a different Oceanid named Clymene, who was mother of Phaethon by Helios in some accounts.
  4. ^ Classical sources: Homer, Iliad v.898; Apollonius Rhodius ii. 1232; Bibliotheke i.1.3; Hesiod,Theogony 113; Stephanus of Byzantium, under "Adana"; Aristophanes Birds 692ff; Clement of Rome Homilies vi.4.72.
  5. ^ Hesiod, Theogony 371
  6. ^ Hyginus, Preface to Fabulae.
  7. ^ Aeneid iv.247: "Atlantis duri" and other instances; see Robert W. Cruttwell, "Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 247: 'Atlantis Duri'" The Classical Review 59.1 (May 1945), p. 11.
  8. ^ George Doig, "Vergil's Art and the Greek Language" The Classical Journal 64.1 (October 1968, pp. 1-6) p. 2.
  9. ^ Strabo, 17.3; 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"mountain".
  10. ^ The usage in Virgil's maximum Atlas axem umero torquet stellis ardentibus aptum (Aeneid, iv.481f , cf vi.796f), combining poetic and parascientific images, is discussed in P. R. Hardie, "Atlas and Axis" The Classical Quarterly N.S. 33.1 (1983:220-228).

  1. ^ Polyeidos, Fragment 837; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.627
  2. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV.617ff (on-line English translation at TheoiProject).
  3. ^ Plato, Critias
  4. ^ A lost passage of Pindar quoted by Strabo (3.5.5) was the earliest reference in this context: "the pillars which Pindar calls the 'gates of Gades' when he asserts that they are the farthermost limits reached by Heracles"; the passage in Pindar has not been traced.
  5. ^ Paolo Martini, Il nome etrusco di Atlante, (Rome:Università di Roma) 1987 investigates the etymology of aril, rejecting a link to the verbal morpheme ar- ("support") in favor of a Phoenician etymon in an unattested possible form *'arrab(a), signifying "guarantor in a commercial transaction" with the connotation of "mediator", related to the Latin borrowing arillator, "middleman". This section and note depend on Rex Wallace's review of Martini in Language 65.1 (March 1989:187-188).
  6. ^ Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History 4.26.2
  7. ^ Hyginus, Astronomica 2.21; Ovid, Fasti 5.164
  8. ^ a b Hyginus, Fabulae 192
  9. ^ Hesiod, Works and Days 383; Apollodorus, 3.110; Ovid, Fasti 5.79
  10. ^ Homer, Odyssey 1.52; Apollodorus, E7.23
  11. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 82, 83
  12. ^ Pausanias, Guide to Greece 8.12.7, 8.48.6
  13. ^ Ashley Baynton-Williams, "The 'Lafreri school' of Italian mapmakers"

Reference






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