Atlas

I am Atlas, son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia, and cursed to support the heavens on my shoulders forever.

When Zeus and his siblings rebelled against Cronus and began the ten year war between the Olympians and the Titans, I sided with the Titans. It seemed a sensible thing to do, after all Cronus had been a good King. Of course, he had eaten all of his own children, but other than that small detail he had ruled well.

But of course, we Titans were defeated by Zeus, and cruelly punished. Most of us, including my own brother Menoetius, were confined to Tartarus, the hellish dungeon of torment and suffering which resides beneath the underworld. However, I myself was condemned by Zeus to stand at the Western end of the Earth and hold up the sky for all eternity.

And so I was performing my tough and lonely duty when Heracles turned up, looking for the apples of the Hesperides. The Hesperides are nymphs who tend a lovely garden not far from where I myself stood, at the Atlas mountains. I am related to them and so know them well and was able to help Heracles, who was attempting to complete his twelve labours, the eleventh of which was to steal the apples of the Hesperides.

Knowing that retrieving the apples would be much easier for me, he approached me first, and offered to support the sky whilst I went to the garden. This planted an evil plan into my cunning mind, and so I agreed.

I took the apples with ease, and soon returned to the mountains where I found Heracles sweating and straining with the weight of the sky on his shoulders. He was doing well, and so I put my genius plan into action.

“Hey Heracles, as you’re doing so well, how about I deliver these apples for you? Then I can return and take back the sky.” Of course, I wasn’t going to come back at all. I would leave him there with that weight on his shoulders forever.

“Sure,” he replied, easily taken in by my trick. “But can you take it for a moment, so I can make my cloak more comfortable?”

I saw nothing suspicious about this, so I happily put down the apples and took the sky from him. But the little liar snatched up the apples and ran away as soon as he was free from his burden. Of course, I couldn’t pursue him unless I dropped the sky, and I’m sure that Zeus would punish me terribly if I let it go for a moment. And so I was left here, as lonely as ever, constantly suffering. So the moral of my story is, if there’s ever a huge war between Titans and Olympians, don’t take sides. Also, never trust a hero with a taste for apples.

Tagged as: apples of hesperides, atlas, heracles, olympians, titans