Atlas
deity figure · 8 works · 10 mentions · 12 anchored passages
Atlas the Libyan · Atlas the barbarian · a new Atlas · the magician Atlas
in the texts
Stromata
Barbarian figure credited in different traditions as Heracles's teacher and as the first shipbuilder.
Herodorus relates that Heracles, having become a seer and a natural philosopher, received the pillars of the universe from Atlas the barbarian, the Phrygian — the myth hinting that he succeeded to the knowledge of heavenly things by learning.
Atlas the Libyan first built a ship and sailed the sea.
Under Triopas were Prometheus and Atlas and Epimetheus and the two-natured Cecrops and Io.
Theogony
Son of Iapetus and Clymene, condemned to uphold the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms at the borders of the earth.
And Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before the clear-voiced Hesperides;
And she bore him a stout-hearted son, Atlas:
And Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore to Zeus glorious Hermes, the herald of the deathless gods, for she went up into his holy bed.
Tusculan Disputations
Mythological titan said to bear up the sky, cited as an example of fable arising from ancient astronomical knowledge.
Nor indeed would Atlas be said to bear up the heaven, nor Prometheus to be fastened to the Caucasus, nor starry Cepheus with his wife, his son-in-law, his daughter, unless the divine knowledge of celestial things had carried over their name to the error of fable.
Ion
Titan who bears the sky on his shoulders, grandfather of Hermes through his daughter Maia.
Atlas, who bears upon his brazen back the pressure of the sky, ancient dwelling of the gods, begat Maia from a daughter of one of those gods, and she bare me Hermes to mighty Zeus, to be the servant of the powers divine.
Odyssey
Titan described as looking after the depths of the ocean and bearing the columns that separate heaven and earth; father of Calypso.
It is an island covered with forest, in the very middle of the sea, and a goddess lives there, daughter of the magician Atlas, who looks after the bottom of the ocean, and carries the great columns that keep heaven and earth asunder.
Hymn 18 to Hermes
Atlas is named as Maia's father in the genealogy of Hermes.
He was born of Maia, the daughter of Atlas, when she had mated with Zeus,— a shy goddess she.
Phaedo
Titan of Greek myth who bears up the heavens, invoked metaphorically by Socrates to mock materialist explanations that substitute physical support mechanisms for the true good as cause.
but they do not look for the power which causes things to be now placed as it is best for them to be placed, nor do they think it has any divine force, but they think they can find a new Atlas more powerful and more immortal and more all-embracing than this, and in truth they give no thought to the good, which must embrace and hold together all things.
Ichneutae
Atlas is named through his house, the place Zeus secretly visits in Cyllene's account of Hermes's conception.
You see, Zeus came secretly to Atlas’s house to the deep-girdled goddess and in a cave begot a single son.