In the City of 38 Atlases “The Citizens Ate as if They Would Die the Next Day, and Built as if They Would Live Forever”

(p. D3) Of all the punishments chronicled in Greek mythology, none were as heavy-handed as the one that Zeus meted out to Atlas. Having led the Titans in their losing battle with the Olympian gods for control of the heavens, Atlas was condemned to bear the sky aloft for eternity.

And of all the temples built during the ancient Greek empire, none enlisted more Atlases than the one dedicated to the Olympic Zeus in Akragas, a city-state now called Agrigento, on the southwest coast of Sicily. Atop massive half-columns, 38 Atlases, each 25 feet tall and carved from limestone, seemingly held up the architrave — the main beam that rests on the capitals of columns — with their bent arms.

The Doric temple — the world’s largest — was built to commemorate the victory over Carthage at the battle of Himera in 480 B.C.; it survives today as a heap of tumbled pillars and blocks of stone at the Valley of the Temples archaeological park. Only one of its Atlases, or telamones, remains even semi-intact. It stands on display in the Regional Archaeological Museum, badly weathered and footless but upright.

This past summer the park’s director, Roberto Sciarratta, announced he had commissioned a colossal statue, a sort of Franken-Atlas, to mark the founding of Akragas 2,600 years ago.

. . .

The lyric poet Pindar described Akragas as the most beautiful city “inhabited by mortals,” and the philosopher Empedocles, a native son, is said to have remarked that the citizens ate as if they would die the next day, and built as if they would live forever.

. . .

Nowadays, a copy of the museum’s Atlas, cobbled together in the 1970s, lounges near the rubble, roped off from the public. “Many visitors believe the Atlas on the ground is authentic,” said Leonardo Guarnieri, a park spokesman, with a shrug worthy of Ayn Rand. “It is not authentic.”

He added that the hands of the new golem Atlas would be unencumbered. That ought to take a load off his shoulders.

For the full story see:

Franz Lidz. “Renewable Resources of the Ancients.” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 6, 2020 [sic]): D3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 5, 2020 [sic], and has the title “From the Rubble of Atlases, a Colossus Will Rise.”)

The obscure mention of Ayn Rand near the end of the passages quoted above invites the cognoscenti to remember:

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.