Antaeus

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This article is about the god of Greek mythology. For the musical band, see Antaeus (band). For the publication, see Antaeus (magazine).

Antaeus in Greek and Berber mythology was a giant of Libya, the son of Poseidon and Gaia, and his wife was Tinjis. He was extremely strong as long as he remained in contact with the ground (his mother earth), but once lifted into the air he became as weak as water. He would challenge all passers-by to wrestling matches, kill them, and collect their skulls, so that he might one day build out of them a temple to his father Poseidon. Heracles, finding that he could not beat Antaeus by throwing him to the ground, as he would regain his strength and be fortified, discovered the secret of his power (touching the ground) and held Antaeus aloft until he died (Apollodorus ii. 5; Hyginus, Fab. 31). The myth of Antaeus has been used as a symbol of the spiritual strength which accrues when one rests one's faith on the immediate fact of things. The struggle between Antaeus and Heracles is a favourite subject in ancient sculpture.

In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Antaeus is a giant who guards the ninth circle of Hell, and lowers Dante and Virgil down to the iced-over Cocytus.

[edit] See also

• In the Berber language Antaeus is supposedly known as Änti. A different figure from Egyptian mythology, Anti, was transliterated as "Antaeus" by the Greeks.
• There was a literary magazine, edited by Daniel Halpern, named Antaeus.
• Ан тей (Antaeus in Russian) is the original name of both the Oscar-II class submarine and the Antonov An-22 transport aircraft.
• There is a poem by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney about this myth.
• There are two comic book characters named after this myth, see Antaeus (comics)
• Antaeus is the name of the battlecruiser in the PC game Hostile Waters (game)
• Antaeus is the name of a men's cologne by Chanel
• The Antaeus myth features heavily in the Pat Barker novel Regeneration as a metaphor for men psychologically disturbed in World War One

There is a new paraglider model, an high-end intermediate/performance glider name Antea by the Czech paragliding brand SKY. They tend to name gliders after characters of Greek mythology, like Brontes, one of the cyclopses

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.