Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we'll be discussing Atlas, the titan condemned to hold the sky up upon his shoulders for all of eternity, the Titan - because of his incredible power, unbreakable will, and superlative leadership - who was singled-out and saddled with a bespoke punishment that was even worse than being cast down into the depths of Tartarus, as was the fate of all the other male Titans who fought against the gods in the Titanomachy.

Let's get into it.

Said to be a wise man and known as the father of astronomy, Atlas was the Titan saddled with the unending burden of holding up the heavens on his shoulders, functioning as a living pillar that separated earth from sky. He could be found, locked between Gaia and Uranus, in the far West, near the edge of the world, adjacent to where the Hesperides dwelt. And because of the tireless effort required for his perpetual task, Atlas was associated with endurance and resilience.

The first generation Titans comprised the original 12 titans who were the progeny of two primordial deities, Gaia, the personification of the earth, and Uranus, the personification of the sky. Atlas' father was Iapetus, one of the original 12 Titans, and his mother was Clymene, one of the Oceanids, which was a group of 3,000 sea nymphs who were the daughters of Oceanus. Atlas, along with his three brothers, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius, were second generation Titans. Unlike the other titans who fought against the Olympians during the Titanomachy, which was the cataclysmic 10 year war that raged between the gods and the Titans, Atlas wasn't condemned to an eternity of imprisonment in the depths of Tartarus. No, his special punishment was to forever hold up the heavens upon his shoulders.

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