Gigantes (Giants) :: Sons of Gaea and Uranus

The Gigantes, or Giants, were a race of powerful warriors born from the earth and the blood of Uranus. They fought the Olympian gods in the Gigantomachy and were defeated, a war that Greek artists painted on temples and vases more often than almost any other battle of the gods.

Birth of the Giants

In Hesiod’s Theogony (lines 183–187) the drops of blood from the wounded Uranus fell on Gaea, who bore the Furies, the Giants “in shining armour with long spears in their hands,” and the ash-tree nymphs. Hesiod pictures them as armed men. Later writers make them huge and fearsome; Apollodorus (Library 1.6.1) describes them with long hair and beards and scaly dragon feet, and says Gaea bore them to Uranus, at Phlegrae or Pallene, in anger at the imprisonment of the Titans. In later art they are often shown with snakes in place of legs.

Giants and Titans

The Giants are often confused with the Titans, the earlier children of Uranus and Gaea, but they fought different wars: the Titans fought Zeus in the Titanomachy and were shut in Tartarus; the Giants rose against the Olympians later. Apollodorus places the Giants’ birth after the Titans were defeated, as a second revenge of the Earth. Typhon is also a separate child of Earth: she bore him by Tartarus, after the gods had overcome the Giants (Apollodorus, Library 1.6.3).

The Gigantomachy

According to Apollodorus (1.6.1–2) the gods learned from an oracle that they could not destroy the Giants without the help of a mortal, and so Zeus called on Heracles through Athena. Gaea looked for a herb that would make her sons safe from harm even from a mortal, but Zeus forbade Dawn, Moon and Sun to shine and cut the herb himself.

Each Giant fell to a particular god. Heracles shot Alcyoneus, who could not die on his native ground, and dragged him out of Pallene at Athena’s advice. Athena threw the island of Sicily on Enceladus, Poseidon crushed Polybotes under Nisyros, a piece he broke off the island of Kos, and Hephaestus killed Mimas with missiles of red-hot metal (in Euripides, Ion 212–218, it is Zeus who burns Mimas with his thunderbolt). Porphyrion, who attacked Heracles and Hera, was struck by Zeus’ thunderbolt and shot down by Heracles; Pindar calls him “king of the Giants” and gives his death to the bow of Apollo (Pythian 8.12–18). Hecate burned Clytius with her torches and Dionysus killed Eurytus with his thyrsus; the rest were struck by Zeus and finished off with Heracles’ arrows.

Apollodorus (Library 1.6.2) names more of the fallen:

• Ephialtes was shot in the left eye by Apollo and in the right by Heracles.
• Hermes, wearing the helmet of Hades, killed Hippolytus, and Artemis killed Gration.
• The Fates, fighting with bronze clubs, killed Agrius and Thoas.
• Athena also flayed Pallas and used his skin as a shield.

Pindar also names Phlegra as the field where the gods met the Giants, and has Heracles take part in it (Nemean 1.67–69). In his telling Heracles, with Telamon at his side, found Alcyoneus, a herdsman huge as a mountain, at Phlegra and did not spare the string of his bow (Isthmian 6.31–35, Nemean 4.25–27). Euripides’ chorus sees Athena standing over Enceladus on the temple sculptures at Delphi, with the Gorgon shield (Ion 205–218).

Homer knew a different tradition: in the Odyssey (7.58–60) Eurymedon was once king of the insolent Giants, but he brought destruction on his reckless people and perished himself; his daughter Periboea bore Nausithous, the first king of the Phaeacians, to Poseidon. Homer also says that the Laestrygonians who attacked Odysseus were not like men, but like the Giants (Odyssey 10.119–120). Diodorus places battles with Giants at Pallene in Macedonia, at Phlegra near Cumae in Italy and on Rhodes (4.15.1, 4.21.5–7, 5.55.5, 5.71.4).

Antaeus, the Libyan wrestler whom Heracles lifted off the earth and crushed, was a son of Poseidon, and because he grew stronger whenever he touched the ground some called him a son of Earth (Apollodorus 2.5.11). He is not one of the Giants of Phlegrae, but his earth-born strength has long placed him among them.

Gigantes Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 183–187; Homer, Odyssey 7.56–63 and 10.119–120; Apollodorus, Library 1.6.1–3 and 2.5.11; Pindar, Nemean 1.67–69 and 4.25–27, Isthmian 6.31–35 and Pythian 8.12–18; Euripides, Ion 205–218; Diodorus 4.15.1, 4.21.5–7, 5.55.5 and 5.71.4.

See Also: Gigantomachy, Gaea, Uranus, Cronus, Titans, Zeus, Athena, Heracles, Typhon, Alcyoneus, Porphyrion