Atlas and Perseus, the last visitor
Atlas
Atlas was one of the most famous Titans, the son of Jápeto and Oceanid Asia (or, possibly, climen). He was the leader of Titan’s rebellion against Zeus, and received an appropriate punishment after the end of the Titanomaquia: he was condemned to hold the sky forever. Only once, and for a very brief period, Heracles deprived him of this burden. Perseo, probably using the head of Medusa, made it the rocky Atlas Modañas .
Name and representation
The name of Atlas is of uncertain origin, probably pre-litter, but the ancient Greeks and Romans seem to have thought that it had derived from a Greek root that sounds similar to the meaning of ‘very durable’.
This fully coincides with the representation of Atlas as a huge and bearded man, always slightly hunched over and with pain under the weight of the heavens, generally represented as a balloon outlined with the most famous constellations .
Family
According to Hesiod, Atlas was the son of Titan Ipetus and Oceanid Clymene . However, some, who do not agree with him, say that his mother was another nymph ninfa called Asia. Either way, he had three brothers (Prometheus, Epimeteo and Menoetius) and possibly so many wives.
From Pleione, he had eight daughters: the Goddess-Ninfa Calipso and the seven Pleiades (Alcion, Asterope, Electra, Calean. Another Oceanid, Aethra, gave him a few more daughters, the híades, and his only son, Hyas . Finally, according to some, the Hesperides were also daughters of Atlas, outside his marriage to Hesperis.
Titanomaquia and Atlas’s punishment
The children of Japeto took the opposite sides during the titanomaquia: while Prometheus and Epimeteo decided to help Zeus, Atlas and his brother Menoetius put on the side of the Titans . Over time, Atlas even managed to become the leader of the rebellion, but that did not end very well for him in the long run, since he got him the most severe punishment after the defeat of the Titans .
Namely, Atlas was condemned to sustain the heavens for all eternity, standing at the most distant western edges of the Earth near the garden of the daughters of his, the Hesperides . Some say that the sky was placed directly on their shoulders. Others, however, are more merciful and claim that Atlas actually supports the two pillars that separate the earth and heaven.
Meetings with heroes
Since, obviously, Atlas was not allowed to move a little, and not many people knew where his place of residence was, the only myths in which two of the greatest heroes of Greece are included who reached him in the end from the earth.
Heracles
The first one was Heracles, who, after invalidating two of him’s ten original works, had the task of bringing some of the golden apples of the Hesperides to Euristeo. Heracles intelligently offered Atlas to change the roles with him so that the Titan could go to look for apples to his himself, without causing problems or attracting unnecessary attention of thieves, the Guardian dragon of apples.
Atlas did precisely that, but he had his own plan: to deliver the apples himself to Eurystheus and then, of course, to completely forget Heracles and his old job. Heracles, however, surpassed the credulous Titan, accessing the plan but asking him to hold the sky first so he could adjust in a more comfortable position. Instead, Heracles simply seized the golden apples and never looked back.
Perseus
The second and last hero to visit Atlas was Perseus . When passing through the Titan, Perseus asked for hospitality, but Atlas, fearing once again some humiliating trick, rejected it. Then, Perseo showed him the head of Medusa and Atlas became stone, that is, the North Africa mountain range that still is named.
Sources
There are few verses in the "theogony" of Hesiod that tell the stories of Atlas and his brothers. Heracles’s meeting with Atlas is counted again in the fifth chapter of the second book of the ‘Library’ of Apolodoro, while his transformation into a mountain range is narrated by Ovid in the fourth book of his ‘metamorphosis’. ‘
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