By the Gods!

Atlas

The big man with the mother of all back pain, Atlas is one of the more famed Titans from the world of Greek myth. He was the son of Iapetus and Asia by Hesiod’s account (Hesiod being the author of the famed Theogony, from which a great deal of our info on Greek myth comes), but Hyginus believed him to be the son of Aether and Gaia. Regardless of his parentage, Atlas was a big strong fella who found himself on the losing team after the war between the Olympians and the Titans (the Titanomachy).

Atlas was undoubtedly a serious force for the Titans, but they still couldn’t quite get it done, due in part to Atlas’ brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus betraying their own kind to form an alliance with the Olympians. When Zeus and his cohorts had won out, they banished most of the Titans to Tartarus, the abyssal dungeon beneath even the Underworld. Atlas, however, with a nod to his incredible strength and apropos parentage, was sentenced to the western edge of the world and charged with holding up Uranus (the sky) on his shoulders forever. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a guy.

Though he’s often shown supporting the earth, this is an incorrect portrayal. He was originally depicted shouldering a great celestial orb, speckled with the sun, stars, and other knick-knacks of the firmament.

Atlas, in some stories, was turned to stone, and his tremendous body formed the Atlas mountain range in Northern Africa. In another tale, Heracles has a wacky adventure with the tragically trapped Titan, with hilarious results.