antaeus

Antaeus (or nti in the Berber language) in Greek mythology and Berber mythology, was a 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). He challenged all comers to wrestling matches, beat them and killed them (Antaeus was collecting the skulls of passing travellers, so that he might one day build a temple of skulls for his father, Poseidon) until Heracles arrived, discovered his secret and destroyed him. Heracles found he could not beat Antaeus by throwing him to the ground, and Antaeus found he could not beat Heracles by crushing his skull. In the end, Heracles realised the ground was the source of his power, and so held him aloft until Antaeus died. Pliny, quoting Euanthes, says (Hist. Nat. viii. 22) that a man of the Antaeus family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Ovid IX, 184. In 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.

Antaeus

See also