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In Greek mythology, Atlas was one of the primordial Titans.

Atlas (Eng. /'ćt ləs/ Gk. Ἄτλας) was the son of the Titan Iapetus (Eng. /aɪ ə 'pi: təs/) and the Oceanid Clymene (Eng. /'klɪ mə ni:/ Gk. Κλυμένη Klyménē).[1] Where a Titan and a Titaness are assigned each of the seven planetary powers, Atlas is paired with Phoebe and governs the moon. [2] He had three brothers — Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius.[3]
Atlas sided with the Titans in their war (known as the Titanomachy) against the Olympians. His brothers Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoetius weighed the odds and betrayed the other Titans by an alliance with the Olympians. When the Titans were defeated, many of them were confined to Tartarus, but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of the earth and hold up the Sky on his shoulders, to prevent the two from resuming their primordial embrace.

A common misconception is that Atlas was forced to hold the earth on his shoulders, but this is incorrect. Classical art shows Atlas holding a Celestial Sphere, not a Globe.

Wikipedia posted:

In European bestiaries and legends, a basilisk (from the Greek βασιλίσκος basiliskos, a little king, in Latin Regulus) is a legendary reptile reputed to be king of serpents and said to have the power of causing death by a single glance. According to the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, the basilisk is a small snake that is so venomous that it leaves a wide trail of deadly venom in its wake, and its gaze is likewise lethal.

Basilisk is also the name of a genus of small lizards, (family Corytophanidae). The Green Basilisk, also called plumed basilisk, is often called the "Jesus lizard" for its ability to run across the surface of water.

Wikipedia posted:

Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined round the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. He was overcome and slain by Heracles. The following day, the Argonauts passed by, on their chthonic return journey from Colchis at the opposite end of the world, and heard the lament of "shining" Aigle, one of the Hesperides, and viewed the still-twitching Ladon (Argonautica, book iv).

Ladon was given several parentages, each of which placed him at an archaic level in Greek myth: the offspring of "Ceto, joined in love with Phorcys" (Hesiod, Theogony 333) or of Typhon, who was himself serpent-like from the waist down, and Echidna (Bibliotheke 2.113; Hyginus, Preface to Fabulae) or of Gaia herself, or in her Olympian manifestation, Hera: "The Dragon which guarded the golden apples was the brother of the Nemean lion" asserted Ptolemy Hephaestion (recorded in his New History V, lost but epitomized in Photius, Myriobiblion 190).

The image of the snake-dragon coiled round the tree, originally adopted by the Hellenes from Near Eastern and Minoan sources, is familiar from surviving Greek vase-painting. In the second century CE Pausanias saw among the treasuries at Olympia an archaic cult image in cedar-wood of Heracles and the apple-tree of the Hesperides with the dragon coiled around it (Description of Greece 6.19.8).

Ladon might be given multiple heads, a hundred in Aristophanes' The Frogs (a passing remark in line 475), which might speak with different voices.

Diodorus Siculus gives a euhemerist interpretation of Ladon, as a human shepherd guarding a flock of golden-fleeced sheep, adding "But with regards to such matters it will be every man’s privilege to form such opinions as accord with his own belief" (4.26.2).

Ladon is the constellation Draco, according to Hyginus' Astronomy.

Ladon is the Greek version of the West Semitic serpent Lotan, or the Hurrian serpent Illuyanka.