0254ANCIENTAtlas

0254ANCIENTAtlas_Farnese

Gallery
Ovid Met.

The Farnese Atlas, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples

Atlas was son of Titan Iapetus and Clymene, and Oceanid. For his role in the Titanomachy, Zeus relegated Atlas to the punishment of ever bearing the vault of heaven on his shoulders and to guard the pillars of heaven. Some think of him as the father of Calypso, others the father of Hesperides or of the Pleiades.

Mount Atlas is certainly named after him, the highest peak in the Atlas range in Northern Africa.

A white marble statue of Atlas kneeling and holding a celestial globe on his shoulders

The depictions on the globe itself are the constellations and other astronomical markings. The date of the astronomy on the globe is much disputed.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.