Atlas is a Picture of Adam Prior to His Eating the Fruit—and of Mankind in General
Atlas presents us with a picture, from the Greek point of view, of Adam in the Garden of Eden just prior to his eating of the forbidden fruit. Before he could eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam had to put God and the strict spirituality of His law at a distance. In that sense he became the “Elevator of the heavens,” enabling himself to feel as if heaven were afar off from earth, and to act as if the God of the heavens could not see through the clouds, or did not regard with displeasure one who would flout His instructions.
According to Robert Graves, Atlas means “he who dares,” or “he who suffers.” Both definitions point to Adam since by eating the forbidden fruit, he was one who dared and as a consequence, became one who suffered. But Atlas is more than simply a picture of Adam: he represents Greek humanity as a whole making room for the gods they believe they are choosing to worship.
Greek religion is the system of Zeus—the transfigured serpent. Athena is the serpent’s Eve and goddess of its wisdom. The Supreme God of the heavens has no place in this system. For Greek religion to prosper, mankind must keep pushing away the heavens and the God of the heavens. And the Greeks kept pushing until they lost the knowledge of What they were pushing away and why they were doing it. This is memorialized in this previously cited passage from the Book of Acts:
Now Paul, standing in the center of the Areopagus [the Hill of Ares west of the Akropolis], averred, “Men! Athenians! On all sides am I beholding how unusually religious you are. For, passing through and contemplating the objects of your veneration, I found a pedestal also, on which had been inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ ” (Acts 17:22-23).
It isn’t that Greek religion excoriates the Creator, or makes Him into a hated “other,” but rather that Zeus, Athena, and the rest of the gods obscure His memory and take His place.
Nyx, the Hesperides, and Atlas share an intimate association in Greek myth. In the Far West of the world, Atlas stands before the “clear-voiced Hesperides” who originated in Nyx. We’ve seen that the greatest of Greek heroes, Herakles, also had an intimate connection to the Hesperides and Atlas. In Chapter 22, we’ll examine that connection in more detail and Herakles’ special place on the left side of the east pediment. But first we’ll take a look at how the chief sculptor, Phidias, used Hermes to connect this background scene on the right side with the scene of Athena’s birth in the center.
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