Why does atlas carry the world

Menoitios was sent to Tartarus in the underworld. Atlas, however, was condemned to stand at the western edge of the Earth and hold the sky on his shoulders. Different sources vary in their descriptions of how Atlas held up the sky. In Hesiod's "Theogony," Atlas stands at the western edge of the earth near the Hesperides, supporting the sky on his head and hands. The "Odyssey" describes Atlas standing in the sea holding the pillars that keep the earth and sky apart—in this version, he is the father of Calypso.

Herodotus was the first to suggest that the sky rested atop Mount Atlas in the western part of northern Africa, and later traditions still report that Atlas was a man who metamorphosed into the mountain. Perhaps the most famous myth involving Atlas is his role in one of the celebrated twelve labors of Hercules , the main version of which is found in Apollodorus of Athens's Library.

In this legend, Hercules was required by Eurystheus to fetch the golden apples from the fabled gardens of the Hesperides, which were sacred to Hera and guarded by the fearsome hundred-headed dragon Ladon.

Following the advice of Prometheus, Hercules asked Atlas in some versions the father of the Hesperides to get him the apples while he, with the help of Athena, took the sky onto his own shoulders for a while, giving the Titan a welcome respite. Perhaps understandably, when returning with the golden apples, Atlas was reluctant to resume the burden of carrying the sky.

However, the wily Hercules tricked the god into swapping places temporarily while the hero got himself some cushions to more easily bear the tremendous weight. Of course, as soon as Atlas was back holding the heavens, Hercules and his golden booty hot-footed back to Mycenae.

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Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. So did the Greeks believe the world was round and if so, was it only in Medieval times the world became flat and then round again in the modern era? Eratosthenes of Alexandria born bc worked out its diameter. It was known that shadows cast by the sun in Alexandria and Syene Aswan were unequal. Eratosthenes took measurements inside a well in Syene and along an obelisk in Alexandria a year apart, but on the same day of the year.

Using this information, the distance between both cities, and simple trigonometry, he estimated the Earth's diameter at 7, miles. The latter image is courtesy of mapmakers who, unfortunately, did not know their mythology very well.

The sky was a big inverted dome with stars hung on it. Ptolemy proved that the world was round. The medieval view of a flat world comes from Biblical literalism, and Genesis, like Greek mythology, imagines a flat world covered by a dome.

The idea that anyone thoought it was flat was probably invented in the eighteenth century. The size of the world was also fairly accurately known. Wilf Meldrew, Puebla, Mexico Atlas supported the heavens on his shoulders, with his feet firmly on the ground.

He was later turned into Mt Atlas by Perseus who kindly flashed his gorgon at him. We can't derive any views on the shape of the world from what they thought of Atlas I'm afraid. Mark Blaker, Bristol UK The Greeks knew that the world was round, and made reasonable calculations of its size based on Phythagorean trigonometry. Educated people in the middle ages would probably have also known that the world was round, but kept quiet to avoid confusing the common people.

It wasn't the shape of the earth, but the claim that the earth rotated around the sun rather than vice versa, which caused difficulties.