ATLAS AND THE HESPERIDES SERIES

#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.After its death the serpent was immortalised in the sky as the constellation Draco, curling between the Great and Little Bears, and right next to it is Heracles himself, with raised club. In some accounts Heracles himself confronted and killed the serpent before taking the apples with his own hands. After Eurystheus had seen the apples, Athena returned them to the Hesperides’ garden, since no mortal was allowed to possess the sacred fruit. The gullible giant took back his burden, never to set it down again, and Heracles at once seized the fruit and made good his escape. He asked Atlas to take hold of the sky for a moment, while he made himself more comfortable with a padded cushion for his head. He planned never to take up his burden again and said that he would himself deliver the apples to Eurystheus, but Heracles easily tricked the dull-witted Titan.

Heracles offered to hold up the sky for him if he would fetch the apples from the Hesperides’ garden, so Atlas happily relinquished his weary load and went off to pick the golden fruit. Having wrestled with the sea-god Nereus to find out the way to the land of the Hesperides, Heracles came at last to the place where Atlas stood, condemned to support the sky for all eternity as a punishment for fighting with the other Titans against Zeus. The eleventh of the labors performed by Herakles was to fetch the golden apples for Eurystheus. Hesiod calls the Hesperides the daughters of Nyx (Night). The Hesperides, helped by the giant serpent Ladon, guarded the tree bearing these apples from the daughters of Atlas, who were in the habit of pilfering the golden fruit. In this garden grew the golden apples which Gaia (Earth) once put forth as a marriage-gift for Zeus and Hera. The Hesperides were singing Nymphs living in a western garden beyond the sunset, on an island at the far ends of the earth where the Titan Atlas held up the rim of the sky. Herakles also offers the promise of immortality to his most disciplined imitators, for it was the successful completion of Herakles' physically taxing labors that assured his apotheosis to live among the gods after his death.

ATLAS AND THE HESPERIDES SERIES

The hero's aging appearance over the series of metopes, moving from unbearded youth to bearded, full-bodied adult, may reflect the Olympic athlete's coming of age. The divine and at same time tranquil figure of Athena is magnificent. In front of Herakles stands Atlas, was a brought back the golden apples guarded by the Hesperides Nymphs, and offers them to him with both hands.

On the left, behind the hero, Athena wearing a tranquil expression assists him, easily supporting part of the sky with one raised arm while holding her spear with the right hand. In the center Herakles is turned to the right as with an effort he holds up the sky on his shoulder. The best preserved and one of the finest metopes is that portraying the myth of the Apples of the Hesperides. Olympia Metopes - VIII: Herakles’ Eleventh Labor

Atlas and the hesperides