Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1)

by Stephen Fry

His strongest and most violent opponent in the war had not been Kronos but ATLAS, the brutally powerful eldest son of Iapetus and Clymene.33 Atlas had been at the center of every battle, rousing his fellow Titans into combat, shouting for one last supreme effort even as the Hecatonchires were battering them into submission. As punishment for his enmity, Zeus sentenced him to hold up the sky for eternity. This killed two birds with one stone. Zeus’s predecessors, Kronos and Ouranos, had been forced to waste much of their energy in separating heaven from earth. At a stroke Zeus relieved himself of that draining burden and placed it, quite literally, on the shoulders of his most dangerous enemy. At the junction of what we would call Africa and Europe the Titan strained, the whole weight of the sky bearing down upon him.