Online Encyclopedia

ATLAS

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 858 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ATLAS  , in

Greek
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mythology, the " endurer," a son of the Titan
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Iapetus and Clymene (or
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Asia),
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brother of
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Prometheus . Homer, in the Odyssey (i . 52) speaks of him as " one who knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps the tall pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder." In the first instance he seems to have been a marine creation . The pillars which he supported were thought to rest in the sea, immediately beyond the most western horizon . But as the Greeks' knowledge of the west increased, the name of Atlas was transferred to a hill in the north-west of Africa . Later, he was represented as a king of that
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district, rich in flocks and herds, and owner of the garden of the
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Hesperides, who was turned into a rocky mountain when
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Perseus, to punish him for his inhospitality, showed him the Gorgon's head (Ovid, Metam. iv . 627) . Finally, Atlas was explained as the name of a
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primitive astronomer, who was said to have made the first celestial globe (Diodorus iii . 6o) . He was the
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father of the Pleiades and Hyades; according to Homer, of
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Calypso . In
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works of
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art he is represented as carrying the heavens or the terrestrial globe . The Farnese statue of Atlas in the Naples museum is well known .

The plural

form ATLANTES is the classical
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term in architecture for the male sculptured figures supporting a superstructure as in the
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baths at
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Pompeii, and in the temple at Agrigentum in Sicily . In 18th-century architecture
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half-figures of men with strong
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muscular development were used to support balconies ',see CARYATIDES and TELAMONES) . A figure of Atlas supporting the heavens is often found as a frontispiece in early collections of maps, and is said to have been first thus used by Mercator . The name is hence applied to avolume of maps (see MAP), and similarly to a
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volume which contains a
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tabular conspectus of a subject, such as an atlas of ethnographical, subjects or anatomical plates . It is also used of a large
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size of
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drawing paper .

End of Article: ATLAS
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ATLANTIS, ATALANTIS, or ATLANTICA
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ATLAS MOUNTAINS

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