Atlas

Bearer of the Sky

Hesiod makes Atlas one of the four sons of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, with Menoetius, Prometheus and Epimetheus. Zeus deals with each of them, and Atlas's lot is to stand at the ends of the earth, before the clear-voiced Hesperides, holding up the wide sky with his head and arms. The Theogony presents this as an assignment by Zeus, not as the aftermath of any single battle.

The Odyssey gives a different image of the same figure: the nymph Calypso is the daughter of Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea and keeps the tall pillars that hold earth and sky apart. Hesiod also names him as the father of Maia, mother of Hermes.

The Golden Apples

Apollodorus's handbook tells how Heracles, sent for the golden apples of the Hesperides, was advised by Prometheus not to fetch them himself but to send Atlas, taking the sky onto his own shoulders meanwhile. Atlas came back with three apples and proposed to deliver them to Eurystheus himself; Heracles, by a trick, got him to take the sky back and left with the apples. Apollodorus adds that some say Heracles picked the apples himself after killing the guardian serpent.

The Stone Mountain

Ovid ties Atlas to the mountains of north-west Africa. In the Metamorphoses Perseus, returning with Medusa's head, asks Atlas for hospitality and is refused, because Atlas remembers a prophecy that a son of Zeus would rob him of his golden fruit. Perseus shows him the Gorgon's head and Atlas becomes a mountain range that carries the sky and its stars.