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ATHLOTHETÆ——ATLAS.
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the athletes on the Campus Martius. The Capitoline contest survived during the whole of antiquity.


Athlŏthĕtæ. The persons who arranged, and acted as umpires in, the various public games of Greece. They were also called Agōnŏthĕtæ, and at Olympia Hellānōdĭkæ. (See also Panathenæa.)


Atilius Fortunātiānus. A Latin grammarian who flourished in the first half of the 4th century a.d., and was the author of a school manual of prosody.


Atīmĭa. This Greek word does not imply dishonour in the modern sense, but deprivation of civil rights, whether partial, complete, temporary, or perpetual. Partial atimia at Athens might consist, for instance, in depriving a citizen of the right to appear again as prosecutor, in case he had, in this capacity, failed to obtain a fifth part of the votes; or of the right to propose a law again to the assembly, if he had been three times condemned for making illegal propositions. In cases of complete atimia, a person was excluded from taking part in any public proceeding whatever. He was forbidden access to the ăgŏra and the public sanctuaries; he was incapacitated from appearing in court as a prosecutor. In case of very serious offences the atimia might be followed by confiscation of property, and might even be extended to a man's children. Atimia might also be inflicted on debtors to the State, if the debt was not paid within the appointed time. It was then accompanied with a fine equivalent to the amount already owed. The payment of the debt brought the atimia to an end. But where it was inflicted for other offences, it was seldom removed, and then only after a vote of at least six thousand citizens.

In Sparta complete atimia was mostly inflicted on persons who had been guilty of cowardice in war. The offender was not only cut off from all civil rights, and from the common meals and exercises, but had to submit to every kind of insult. At the public festivals he had to take a low place. He was obliged to wear a patchwork cloak, to have his hair cut on one side; to give way in the street to every one, even to young men; no one would give him light for his fire, marry his daughter, or give him his daughter to wife. [Plutarch, Agēsĭlāüs 30.] Bachelors were also subject to a kind of atimia. They were not allowed to be present at certain festivals, and had no claim to the marks of respect which the young, in other cases, were expected to show. The full possession of civic rights and privileges was called ĕpĭtīmĭa. (See Infamia.)


Atlās (the "bearer" or "endurer"). The son of the Titan Iăpĕtus and Cly̌mĕnē (or, according to another account, Asia), brother of Menœtius, Promētheus, and Epimētheus. In Homer [Od. i. 52] he is called “ the "thinker of mischief," who knows the depths of the whole sea, and has under his care the pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder. In Hesiod [Theog. 517] he stands at the western end of the earth, near where the Hespĕrĭdĕs dwell, holding the broad heaven on his head and unwearied hands. To this condition he is forced by Zeus, according to a later version as a punishment for the part which he took in the battle with the Titans. By the Ocean nymph Plēĭŏnē he is father of the Plēĭădĕs, by Æthra of the Hyădĕs.

In Homer the nymph Calypso is also his daughter, who dwells on the island Ogy̌gia, the navel of the sea. Later authors make him the father of the Hesperides, by Hesperis. It is to him that Amphitrītē flies when pursued by Poseidōn. As their knowledge of the West extended, the Greeks transferred the abode of Atlas to the African mountain of the same name. Local stories of a mountain which supported the heaven would, no doubt, encourage the identification. In later times Atlas was represented as a wealthy king, and owner of the garden of the Hesperides. Perseus, with his head of Medūsa, turned him into a rocky mountain for his inhospitality. In works of art he is represented as carrying