In Greek mythology, Atlas was a titan condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity after the Titanomachy. Atlas plays a role in the myths of two of the greatest Greek heroes: Heracles and Perseus. According to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, Atlas stood at the ends of the earth in extreme west, he became identified with the Atlas Mountains in northwest Africa and was said to be the first King of Mauretania. Atlas was said to have been skilled in philosophy and astronomy. In antiquity, he was credited with inventing the first celestial sphere. In some texts, he is credited with the invention of astronomy itself. Atlas was the Oceanid Asia or Clymene, he was a brother of Prometeus. He had many children daughters, the Hesperides, the Hyades, the Pleiades, the nymph Calypso who lived on the island Ogygia; the term Atlas has been used to describe a collection of maps since the 16th century when Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published his work in honor of the mythological Titan. The "Atlantic Ocean" is derived from "Sea of Atlas".

In Ancient Greek, Plato's Timaeus dialogue mentions "Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος" meaning "Atlas's Island", giving rise to the English derivative: Atlantis. The etymology of the name Atlas is uncertain. Virgil took pleasure in translating etymologies of Greek names by combining them with adjectives that explained them: for Atlas his adjective is durus, "hard, enduring", which suggested to George Doig that Virgil was aware of the Greek τλῆναι "to endure". Since the Atlas mountains rise in the region inhabited by Berbers, it has been suggested that the name might be taken from one of the Berber ádrār'mountain'. Traditionally historical linguists etymologize the Ancient Greek word Ἄτλας as comprised from copulative α- and the Proto-Indo-European root *telh₂-'to uphold, support', and, reshaped to an nt-stem. However, Robert Beekes argues that it cannot be expected that this ancient Titan carries an Indo-European name, that the word is of Pre-Greek origin, such words end in -ant. Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in their war against the Olympians, the Titanomachy.

When the Titans were defeated, many of them were confined to Tartarus, but Zeus condemned Atlas to stand at the western edge of Gaia and hold up the sky on his shoulders. Thus, he was Atlas Telamon, "enduring Atlas," and became a doublet of Coeus, the embodiment of the celestial axis around which the heavens revolve. A common misconception today is that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders, but Classical art shows Atlas holding the celestial spheres, not the terrestrial globe; the Greek poet Polyidus c. 398 BC tells a tale of Atlas a shepherd, encountering Perseus who turned him to stone. Ovid gives a more detailed account of the incident, combining it with the myth of Heracles. In this account Atlas is not a shepherd but a King. According to Ovid, Perseus arrives in Atlas' Kingdom and asks for shelter, declaring he is a son of Zeus. Atlas, fearful of a prophecy which warned of a son of Zeus stealing his golden apples from his orchard, refuses Perseus hospitality. In this account, Atlas is turned not just into stone by Perseus, but an entire mountain range: Atlas' head the peak, his shoulders ridges and his hair woods.

The prophecy did not relate to Perseus stealing the golden apples but Heracles, another son of Zeus, Perseus' great-grandson. One of the Twelve Labours of the hero Heracles was to fetch some of the golden apples which grow in Hera's garden, tended by Atlas' reputed daughters, the Hesperides which were called the Atlantides, guarded by the dragon Ladon. Heracles went to Atlas and offered to hold up the heavens while Atlas got the apples from his daughters. Upon his return with the apples, Atlas attempted to trick Heracles into carrying the sky permanently by offering to deliver the apples himself, as anyone who purposely took the burden must carry it forever, or until someone else took it away. Heracles, suspecting Atlas did not intend to return, pretended to agree to Atlas' offer, asking only that Atlas take the sky again for a few minutes so Heracles could rearrange his cloak as padding on his shoulders; when Atlas set down the apples and took the heavens upon his shoulders again, Heracles took the apples and ran away.

In some versions, Heracles instead built the two great Pillars of Hercules to hold the sky away from the earth, liberating Atlas much as he liberated Prometheus. According to Plato, the first king of Atlantis was named Atlas, but that Atlas was a son of Poseidon and the mortal woman Cleito; the works of Eusebius and Diodorus give an Atlantean account of Atlas. In these accounts, Atlas' father was Uranus and his mother was Gaia, his grandfather was Elium "King of Phoenicia". Atlas was raised by Basilia. Atlas was a legendary king of Mauretania, the land of the Mauri in antiquity corresponding with modern Maghreb. In the 16th century Gerardus Mercator put together the first collection of maps to be called an "Atlas" and devoted his book to the "King of Mauretania". Atlas became associated with Northwest Africa over time, he had been connected with the Hesperides, "Nymph

Louis André Lagrange was a French naval commissioner, twice acting governor of Martinique. Louis André Lagrange was born on 8 October 1804 in Martinique, his parents were naval commissioner and Anne Eulalie Aney. He joined the navy on 1 March 1822, became a commis de marine on 7 July 1826. Lagrange became a sous-commissaire on 9 February 1841. In October 1845 he was commissaire des travaux et approvisionnements in Martinique, he was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour on 3 May 1849. He was promoted to commissaire adjoint on 10 May 1849. Lagrange was promoted to commissaire on 30 July 1853. In January 1855 Lagrange was ordonnateur of Martinique. Lagrange was appointed acting governor of Martinique on 17 July 1856 in place of Louis Henri de Gueydon. On 12 December 1856 he handed over to governor Armand Louis Joseph Denis de Fitte de Soucy. Lagrange was made an officer of the Legion of Honour on 12 August 1857. In December 1857 he was ordonnateur of Martinique. On 14 January 1859 he was again appointed acting governor in place of de Fitte de Soucy.

On 2 June 1859 he handed over to governor Antoine Marie Ferdinand de Maussion de Candé. In 1860 he was ordonnateur of Martinique. Lagrange died on 29 September 1861 at the age of 56

The Greek diaspora, Hellenic diaspora or Omogenia refers to the communities of Greek people living outside Greece, Cyprus which are the traditional Greek homelands, North Macedonia, parts of the Balkans, southern Russia, Asia Minor, the region of Pontus, Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus, southern Italy and Cargèse in Corsica. The term refers to communities newly established by Greek migration outside these traditional areas during the 20th and 21st centuries; the Greek diaspora is one of the oldest and largest in the world, with an attested presence from Homeric times to the present. Examples of its influence range from the role played by Greek expatriates in the emergence of the Renaissance, through liberation and nationalist movements involved in the fall of the Ottoman Empire, to commercial developments such as the commissioning of the world's first supertankers by shipping magnates Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. In Archaic Greece and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes from the Balkans and Asia Minor propagated Greek culture and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins.

Greek city-states were established in Sicily, southern Italy, northern Libya, eastern Spain, the south of France, the Black Sea coast, the Greeks founded over 400 colonies in these areas. Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid Empire marked the beginning of the Hellenistic period, characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization in Asia and Africa. Many Greeks migrated to the new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as geographically-dispersed as Uzbekistan and Kuwait. Seleucia and Alexandria were among the largest cities in the world during Hellenistic and Roman times. Greeks spread across the Roman Empire, in the eastern territories the Greek language became the lingua franca; the Roman Empire was Christianized in the fourth century AD, during the late Byzantine period the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity became a hallmark of Greek identity. In the seventh century, Emperor Heraclius adopted Medieval Greek as the official language of the Byzantine Empire. Greeks continued to live around the Levant and Black Sea, maintaining their identity among local populations as traders and settlers.

Soon afterwards, the Arab-Islamic Caliphate seized the Levant, North Africa and Sicily from the Byzantine Greeks during the Byzantine–Arab Wars. The Greek populations remained in these areas of the Caliphate and helped translate ancient Greek works into Arabic, thus contributing to early Islamic philosophy and science. After the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars, which resulted in the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the Ottoman conquest of Greek lands, many Greeks fled Constantinople and found refuge in Italy, they brought ancient Greek writings, lost in the West, contributing to the Renaissance. Most of these Greeks settled in Venice and Rome. Between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and the second Russo-Turkish War in 1828–29, thousands of Pontic Greeks migrated from the Pontic Alps and eastern Anatolia to Georgia and other southern regions of the Russian Empire, the Russian province of Kars in the South Caucasus. Many Pontic Greeks fled their homelands in Pontus and northeastern Anatolia and settled in these areas to avoid Ottoman reprisals after supporting the Russian invasions of eastern Anatolia in the Russo-Turkish Wars from the late 18th to the early 20th century.

Others resettled in search of new opportunities in trade, farming, the church, the military, the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. Greeks spread through many provinces of the Ottoman Empire and took major roles in its economic life the Phanariots; the Phanariots helped administer the Ottoman Empire's Balkan domains in the 18th century. Other Greeks settled outside the southern Balkans, moving north in service to the Orthodox Church or as a result of population transfers and massacres by Ottoman authorities after Greek rebellions against Ottoman rule or suspected Greek collaboration with Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars fought between 1774 and 1878. Greek Macedonia was most affected by the population upheavals, where the large, indigenous Ottoman Muslim population could form local militias to harass and exact revenge on the Greek-speaking Christian Orthodox population. A larger-scale movement of Greek-speaking peoples in the Ottoman period was Pontic Greeks from northeastern Anatolia to Georgia and parts of southern Russia the province of Kars Oblast in the southern Caucasus after the short-lived Russian occupation of Erzerum and the surrounding region during the 1828–29 Russo-Turkish War.

An estimated one-fifth of Pontic Greeks left their homeland in the mountains of northeastern Anatolia in 1829 as refugees, following the Tsarist army as it withdrew back into Russian territory. The Pontic Greek refugees who settled in Georgia and the southern Caucasus assimilated with preexisting Caucasus Greek communities; those who settled in Ukraine and southern Russia became a sizable proport