ANTÆUS, in fabulous history, a giant of Libya, son of Neptune and Terra. Designing to build a temple to his father, of men's skulls, he slew all he met; but Hercules fighting him, and perceiving the affiance he received from his mother, (for by a touch of the earth he refreshed himself when weary,) lifted him up from the ground and squeezed him to death.

Antæus was king of Mauritania; and from several circumstances, with which we are supplied by various authors, it appears extremely probable that he was the same person with Atlas: they were both of them the sons of Neptune, who reigned over Mauritania, Numidia, and a great part of Libya; as may be naturally inferred from his having such particular marks of distinction conferred upon him by the inhabitants of those regions. They both ruled with absolute power over a great part of Africa, particularly Tingitana. Hercules defeated and slew Antæus in the same war wherein he took the Libyan world from Atlas: both Atlas and Antæus invaded Egypt, and contended with Hercules in the wars with the gods, and were both vanquished by him. Antæus, as well as Atlas, was famed for his knowledge in the celestial sciences: from whence we may fairly conclude them to have been the same king of Mauritania.

Antæus, in his wars with Hercules, who commanded an army of Egyptians and Ethiopians, behaved with great bravery and resolution. Receiving large reinforcements of Libyan troops, he cut off vast numbers of Hercules's men; but that celebrated commander having at last intercepted a strong body of Mauritanian or Libyan forces sent to the relief of Antæus, gave him a total overthrow, wherein both he and the best part of his forces were put to the sword. This decisive action put Hercules in possession of Libya and Mauritania, and consequently of all the riches in those kingdoms; hence arose the fable that Hercules finding Antæus, a giant of an enormous size, with whom he was engaged in single combat, to receive fresh strength as often as he touched his mother earth when thrown upon her, at last lifted him up in the air and squeezed him to death. Hence likewise may be deduced the fable, intimating, that Hercules took Atlas's globe upon his own shoulders, overcame the dragon that guarded the orchards of the Hesperides, and made himself master of all the golden fruit. The golden apples, so frequently mentioned by the old mythologists, were the treasures that fell into Hercules's hands upon Antæus's defeat, the Greeks giving the Oriental word ἀργυράρια, the signification annexed to their own term, ἀργυράρια, apples. After the most diligent and impartial examination of all the different hypotheses of historians and chronologers, relating to Atlas and Antæus, we find none so little clogged with difficulties as that of Sir Isaac Newton. According to that illustrious author, Ammon, the father of Sefac, was the first king of Libya, or that vast tract extending from the borders of Egypt to the Atlantic ocean; the conquest of which country was effected by Sefac in his father's lifetime. Neptune afterwards excited the Libyans to a rebellion against Sefac; flew him, and then invaded Egypt under the command of Atlas or Antæus, the son of Neptune, Sefac's brother and admiral. Not long after, Hercules, the general of Thebais and Ethiopia for the gods or great men of Egypt, reduced a second time the whole continent of Libya, having overthrown and slain Antæus near a town in Thebais, from that event called Antæa or Antæopolis: this, we say, is the notion advanced by Sir Isaac Newton, who endeavours to prove, that the first reduction of Libya by Sefac happened a little above a thousand years before the birth of Christ, as the last by Hercules did some few years after.