Hold Up
I have little to add, I just thought this was a neat bit of word-history:
Atlas:
“collection of maps in a volume,” 1636, first in reference to the English translation of “Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi” (1585) by Flemish geographer Gerhardus Mercator (1512-1594), who might have been the first to use this word in this way. A picture of the Titan Atlas holding up the world appeared on the frontispiece of this and other early map collections.
This is my biggest pet peeve in all of mythology. Atlas did not hold up the world. He held the heavens. To see the inanity of it, try to picture Atlas holding the world. If you are upon the Earth and came upon Atlas, he would seem to be upside down doing a headstand with his feet in the air. And what would he be standing on? That statue in Rockefeller Center is beautiful but wrong.
Great point – and, frankly, “biggest pet peeve in all mythology” is possibly the best phrase I’ve heard today.
The flip side of that, however, is: how did he manage to get a grip on the heavens?
But the beauty of that question is that all the Greeks had to do was come up with a myth to answer it!