PART 2 – Ch

PART 2 – Ch.XIV.15

(KION OURANOU. The Sky Column on Atlas Mountain

in the country of the Hyperboreans)

XIV. 15. The titan Atlas in Romanian heroic songs.

In ante-Homeric antiquity existed a heroic legend in which the titan Atlas, this grandson of Oceanos potamos (Istru) and king in the country of the Hyperboreans (Hesiod says in Theog. v. 507 that Clymena, the daughter of Oceanos was the mother of Atlas and Prometheus), was presented as a giant of the waters and particularly of the seas.

From this Pelasgian legend Homer has preserved only a small fragment in which is told that the titan Atlas knew all the depths of the seas (Odyss. I. v. 52-53), but those who followed him do not say anything, any more in this regard. This is proof that the legend about Atlas, as a giant of the waters had not originated in the southern regions.

Luckily for the study of ante-Homeric traditions, a big number of heroic songs have been preserved to this day with the Romanian people, the essence of which harks back to a very remote antiquity.

A part of these traditional Romanian songs present in several versions the Homeric legend about Atlas, as giant of the Danube and the sea (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p.558-577; Tocilescu, Materialuri folkl. I. 80. 84; Catana, Balade, p.22; Negoescu, Balade, p.74; Sezatoarea, An. V. p. 85; Alecsandri, Poesii pop. p. 134).

In this cycle of ancestral songs the famous titan Atlas has the name of Tanislav or Stanislav.

The hero is originally from the parts of Moldova, or of Olt, and the scene takes place on the Lower Danube, in the regions of Ialomita and Braila. The contents of this legend are the following:

The Turks from Darstor, Giurgiu and Braila, pagan Turks and brawlers, go on the Danube to catch Stanislav the brave, who is “big in stature and terrible at sight”, and “the Danube reared him and wide in shoulders made him”. Arriving to the turn of the river, they meet some “maids from Craiova, proud like queens”, or they see some maids from Selina, Braila and wives from Ialomita, washing cloths in the water, and spreading them into the sun. Asked if they saw Tanislav the brave, the son of Matusa, son of snake of the Danube, they answer that the mother of Tanislav is further downstream, where the streams gather and flow into the Danube.

She washes the weapons and clothes of Tanislav of Turkish blood. These Turks then, going downstream on the Danube, catch Matusa, Tanislav’s mother, bind her and torture her, to tell them the whereabouts of her son. Frightened, the old woman answers them that even further downstream, at a willow with branches bent to the water and spread on the banks, is the kayak of Tanislav, anchored with silver chain, and in it Tanislav sleeps with drawn sword on his chest, because Tanislav is clever. Going further downstream the Turks find Tanislav sleeping in his kayak, written with silver letters, with the sword on his chest, because Tanislav is clever.

But when they see Tanislav’s hair fluttering in the wind, dread and cold shivers run through them. They do not dare to get near Tanislav, but run away and crawl as frogs through the orchards. Then before the Turks appears Tanislav’s servant, a son of an immigrant Greek, who offers to sell them Tanislav tied up. Paid by the Turks, he ties Tanislav, still sleeping, with 12 silk thick ropes. And after Tanislav is bound, a smaller Turk, blind in one eye and lame of one leg, advises his mates to tie on the neck of Tanislav the millstone from the country of Moldova and then to throw him in the Danube, because “the Danube reared him and wide in shoulders made him, the Danube should finish him and his life to end”. The Turks bring the millstone from the country of Moldova, which they tie around the head of Tanislav, or on his back, and then they capsize the kayak in the Danube, “where the water is deeper and there’s no wave, where the eyes see only the wide sea, wide sea and deserted, no being alive, no boat, no ship”.

Tanislav still sleeps when he reaches the bottom of the Danube and for three days he stays in the water with his mouth in the sand. After three days the hero awakens and feeling himself tied up and with a stone around the head, “he thought of God, he prayed to God and God gave him strength”. He grabs the stone, places it on his chest, props himself up on his legs, lifts the stone, the water withdraws to the sides and hits the banks, then he emerges to the surface of the water and bravely swims, because “the Danube knows him, she knows him and he knows her”.

But look, it happens that “a ruddy maiden, with a yellowish bucket”, arriving with the buckets at the Danube, sees Tanislav swimming and breathing hard and exhausted. Frightened, she throws the buckets to the ground, runs fast home and tells her father that Tanislav is drowning and it would be a pity. And her father answers: how can he drown, when he swims like a fish, he crosses the Danube walking, and fights in it like ten.

Then this good hearted old man, taking in his hand the silver oar, runs to the Danube, chooses a copper kayak and seeing Tanislav straining himself and lifting the stone above him, goes to his aid straightaway, cuts the ropes, the stone sinks, the water splits in two, the waves rise and for three hours bubble. Now Tanislav, freed from the load, grabs the oar of the kayak, and when it dips it in the waves of the Danube, the kayak jumps on the bank and throws Tanislav on the grass.

According to another version, when Tanislav wakes up at the bottom of the water, feeling that he is tied up, chained and with the stone around the head, he strains, at the surface he emerges, bravely swims and on the bank emerges, still with the stone around his head.

These are the main parts of the Romanian legend about Tanislav the brave, the son of Matusa, the most titanic figure presented by the Romanian heroic songs, the giant who sleeps for three days at the bottom of the Danube, whom the Danube reared, wide in shoulders made, whom the Danube knows, she knows him and he knows her.

This is an exceptional rhapsody, superior in eloquence and images to any other epic episode from Homer.

As we see, the personality of the Romanian hero Tanislav or Stanislav is identical with the figure of the titan Atlas, who, according to the Odyssey, knows all the depths of the seas.

A very characteristic image presented by the Romanian legend is when it tells us that the Turks had tied around his head a millstone and that he had emerged on dry land still with it around his head. We have here an important ante-historical reminiscence about the simulacra of the titan Atlas, figured with a stone globe, or the sphere of the universe behind his head.

The name Tanislav or Stanislav under which the famous titan Atlas appears in Romanian epic songs belongs also to the ante-Homeric times. One of the Dardanian heroes who fight at Troy against the Greeks had in Homer’s Iliad the name of Sthenelaos (II. XVI. v. 586).

In the historical traditions of the Romans the hero Tanislav was known under the name of Tanus and it was said about him that he had been a king of the Scythians from near the Riphaei Mountains, therefore the Carpathians [1].

[1. Isidorus Hispal., Originum lib. XIII. 20. 24. In this particular passage of Isidorus there is a simple confusion between the ancient name of the Danube, Danusis (Stephanos Byzanthinos), and the big river named by Greek authors Tanais, which flows into the Meotic Lake. But Tanais, or today Don, is a river of steppes and its sources are not in the mountains.

According to Eschyl (Frag. 73), Istru is the river which flows from the lands of the Hyperboreans and from the Rhipaei mountains. Finally we note here that the Danube figured under the name of Istru only from its cataracts downstream (Strabo, VII. 3. 13).

The name of Tanais has been applied to Istru even in the legend of the Argonauts. As the scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius tells us (IV. 282), the Argonauts had entered from the Euxine Pontus into the river Tanais, and after transporting the ship on dry land they reached the great sea].

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