The titanomachy: titan army?

The Russian Hydra

New Member
I was just curious: is there any specificity to what kind of army the Titans had against the gods in The Titanomachy?

What was it comprised of? Monsters? Other immortals? It doesn't seem to be specified.
 

Kurvos

New Member
I always assumed they had an army of other Titans. I mean, like they all combined were referred to as an army.
 

Alejandro

Active Member

From the looks of it, most of the Titans [in existence in the story at the time] actually fought on the side of Zeus and Zeus' siblings while it was a very small number which made up Kronos' army on the opposing side, comprised mostly of Kronos' older brothers and some of his nephews. By my count only eleven or twelve individuals were in Kronos' army while Zeus had literally thousands of soldiers at his disposal (the number rises to thousands when you include the children of Okeanos, who I assume would have fought in the war and eventually been granted positions of power in Zeus' new government after victory, whereupon the sons were worshipped as river-gods and the daughters as various types of nymphs and goddesses). So here's as specific as I think it gets with Kronos' army:

  1. Kronos – King of the Titans
  2. Kreios – one of Kronos' older brothers; who was the Megamedes, "Great Lord," who owned or managed the family estate, comprised of Sky, Sea, Earth & Underworld (= the entire universe)
  3. Atlas – General of Kronos' Army (and a nephew of Kronos)
  4. Menoitios – younger brother of Atlas
  5. Iapetos – one of Kronos' older brothers; father of Atlas and Menoitios
  6. Hyperion – one of Kronos' older brothers
  7. Koios – one of Kronos' older brothers
  8. Pallas (possibly survived the war to later be killed by Athena) – a son of Kreios; and nephew of Kronos
  9. Perses – a son of Kreios; brother of Pallas
  10. Astraios – a son of Kreios; brother of Pallas and Perses
  11. Arke – Herald of Kronos and Messenger of the Titans
  12. Ithax – Courier of the Titans (same personage as Arke?)

Arke we know for sure was not a Titan, even though her mother the Oceanid Elektra (one of those thousands of Okeanos' daughters) was a Titaness. Ithax may or may not have been a Titan. If s\he was the same person as Arke then for sure she was not a Titan. Otherwise everyone else on the list was a Titan.

Astraios, Pallas and Perses differ from the rest of the Titans on this list in that they were each winged. (The other winged Titans in the family all fought on Zeus' side in the Titanomachy. They were Hyperion's children Selene, Eos and Helios; Pallas' children Nike, Zelos, Kratos and Bia; and Astraia, daughter of Astraios and Eos.)

 
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Misa

Member
Hm. I hadn't thought of counting them before. It's interesting to me that you list twelve Titans that Zeus warred against ...and there are twelve main Olympians. I always thought before the twelve came about because of how many of the Titans were born to Gaia and Ouranos, perhaps not.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
No, actually, I have pretty much the same understanding as you: that there is indeed some significant connection between there being twelve Titans (six male and six female) and there being twelve Olympians (likewise six male and six female), and that all of the latter were children and grandchildren of some of the former. It had not occurred to me that I had listed such a striking number of these "Titans," mainly because I was still very conscious of the fact that only ten of them are undoubtedly Titans. And the remaining two (Arke and Ithax) might be the same person, which would bring the total number of them to an uneven eleven rather than twelve. Moreover I imagine that parts of the untold story of the details of how the war went include several defections from Kronos' side to Zeus's and vice versa. I think that, for certain, Themis, Prometheus and Epimetheus originally rooted for Kronos before the prophetic Themis advised Iapetos and the four brothers Atlas, Menoitios, Prometheus and Epimetheus to join Zeus together with her. She only convinced the last two brothers while the rest of the family suffered the most grievous punishments at Zeus' hands as a result of their support of Kronos. Further to this, it wouldn't surprise me if Titanesses like Theia, Phoibe, Pleïone, Asteria and Eos originally supported their husbands (respectively Hyperion, Koios, Atlas, Perses and Astraios) before rethinking their position, for some reason, and moving to the camp which eventually won. So if my above deductions are correct, then the number of soldiers on Kronos' side (and therefore Zeus' side as well) was most likely not always fixed.
 

Misa

Member
True enough, and there is a very real question of what happened in Greek mythology before Zeus was born, and the hints seem to suggest at one point it was a well known part of the whole, of which only pieces are left. I have a strong belief that the religions of Greece and Egypt have a ancient link through Crete, the written language of ancient Crete still remains a puzzle. It seems to me that Zeus came from Crete in some writings, and so too Artemis-Persephone and perhaps Demeter, which seems to suggest that not only was Zeus later identified with Amen, he may have been the god Amen under a different name in Greece - certainly Athena was seen as being from Egypt (Neith?). You also have the Egyptian bull god cults and the Minotaur of Crete which is pretty much the only animal-headed "god" which Greek can boast. Most of their animal-part immortals are of lower halves (serpents, horses, fish).

Anyway, back to Titans and Olympians~!

I know that you likely did not mean your list to be reverent to the the number of Gaia and Ouranos offspring and the Olympian twelve, but the count just stuck me as meaningful, and certainly it could be something no one has noticed or counted before (three fates, three seasons, three furies, three sets of twelve?) - and well, certainly Aphrodite is viewed too as one of Ouranos's daughters, and all but Demeter, Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon probably did not see the Titan war, yet are still called Olympians. Also, while it is mentioned that Zeus, Hades and Poseidon drew lots for their domains (sky, sea, underworld) it is also clear that Hera, Demeter and Hestia have domains (starry heavens, fruitful earth, fire hearth) and perhaps they played lots too or it was a matter of birth or what Titans they killed. (A part of me thinks that Ouranos was both the solid heavens and Tartarus the underworld pit; as Gaia is also titled Khthonie.)

It depend too, I think on just how you define "Titan(ides)" it seems you keep to the first generation born of Gaia and Ouranos having rights to the title? I question that reasoning sometimes, because we have only one source which says it (Hesiod).

Of which Hesiod says : "But these sons whom be begot himself great Ouranos used to call Titanes (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards." (The sons of Ouranos who helped to castrated him - presumably, Kronos - who did the deed, Koios, Krios, Hyperion, Iapetos.)

I do not think that Okeanos helped in this deed, although he is also called a Titan.

Or Ouranos could be talking about not only his castration but another deed, where Rhea and Kronos overthrow Ophion and Eurynome the previous Titan king and queen:

"how, in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Okeanos, governed the world from snow-clad Olympos; how they were forcibly supplanted, Ophion by Kronos, Eurynome by Rhea; of their fall into the waters of Okeanos; and how their successors ruled the happy Titan gods." - Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica

Which has always led me sometimes to the thought that yes Tethys was the mate of Okeanos, but Okeanos - and Tethys? - took other mates as well, for certainly he had the Kerkopes by a Theia daughter of Memnon (or else his own daughter?), and the Nephelae are sometimes called his daughters by Tethys or the daughters of Aither. I've run across mention by Ovid that Zeus made them monkeys ("transformed the men into misshapen animals that seemed both like and unlike humans, shrivelling their limbs, tilting and flattening their noses, ploughing their cheeks with wrinkles of old age. Then, swathed all over in a tawny pelt, he sent them to dwell here, but first removed the means of speech and use of tongues designed for shocking perjury, and left them but screeches and screams for protest and complaint") but also there is Herakles who captures them (but does not kill) and a later mention by Homerica of Zeus turning them to stone (the rock Melampygos/Blackbuttock and 'the Kerkopes' seats'?)

That is significant to me because it shows that Zeus (sky) had contempt for lies and turned them to stone (Gaia: Titans & Gigantes)

So, as Gaia bore the mountains, why did Zeus seem to make his and the rest of the Olympians home upon one? (Also there are look-alike names between Ouranos "heavens" and Ourea/Ouros/Oros "mountains" and given that several daughters of Atlas were connected to both constellations and mountains, so I do not think it was done without purpose, that Olympus is both in the heavens (a star?) and a mountain)

It's interesting too, what Olympian might or might not mean originally.

Yet Ptolemy Hephaestion, New History :
"The tomb which passes for that of Zeus in Krete (Crete) is that of Olympos of Krete, who received Zeus son of Kronos (Cronus), raised him and taught divine things to him; but Zeus, he says, struck down his foster-parent and master because he had pushed the Gigantes (Giants) to attack him in his turn; but when he had struck, before his body he was full of remorse and, since he could appease his sorrow in no other way, he gave his own name to the tomb of his victim."

Also the matter of the title of Olympian, and how it came about, I ran across this mention in Diodorus Siculus, Library of History :
"When the Gigantes (Giants) about Pallene chose to begin war against the immortals, Herakles fought on the side of the gods, and slaying many of the Sons of Ge (Earth) he received the highest approbation. For Zeus gave the name of Olympian only to those gods who had fought by his side, in order that the courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he considered only Dionysos and Herakles worthy of this name."

I wonder if it can be found in any text, the points at which the younger Olympians children of Zeus fought by his side and became one of the twelve, certainly their ascents to Olympus to meet Zeus are noted after deeds (or misdeeds).
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Writers like Herodotos, and Greek myths in general, seem convinced that Athena was originally a Libyan, Egyptian and Phoenician divinity, Herodotos mentioning the connection you've cited between between her and Neith while Pausanias reports that when Kadmos brought an ancient Canaanite image of the goddess to Greece, she was called Onga in the country he had come from, although the Egyptian writer Nonnos claims that Kadmos was born in Egypt and spent the first few years of his life there before his father Agenor relocated the family to Canaan [which later became Phoenicia]. Pausanias also mentions the myth about Athena being born in Libya, and in some versions her father (or foster-father) is Poseidon's Libyan son Triton. And yes, in Egypt and Libya, Zeus was known as Ammon, Amon and Amen, or he was identified with this African deity. Also, yes, there does seem to be a clear emphasis on a Cretan origin for Zeus even in the myths, noting the version of his birth story in which he was born and raised on Crete.

At least in the mythology itself, the Minotaur was technically not a god, although since his mother was a goddess and his grandfather was the Sun [Helios] himself :eek: he was basically half god, half ox. Something closer to the gods, and which characters also have animal heads, are the Telkhines, obscure creatures whose nature seems to be somewhere in between god and daemon. They had dog's heads and flippers for hands (which indeed is amazing if you consider that their special skill was metallurgy - how did they hold their tools with those hands? :confused:). There were, however, actual animal-headed deities in the mythology. The most notable of these are the river-gods, who often appeared in the form of bulls, the ancient fertility symbol. Perhaps to personify them more closely to something relateable, however, these bulls often had men's heads (although they kept their bull-horns), in a trend, which, as you've noted, is the opposite in ancient Egypt. (The river-gods and their father the Titan Okeanos, the first and oldest of all rivers, were, however, also known by the epithet Taurokephalos, "Bull-Headed.") The three Erinnyes [Furies] were sometimes described as hags with dogs' heads (like the Telkhines), snakes for hair (like the Gorgons) and bats' wings. There's also Phobos, the god who personified alarm or panic, who was depicted in art as lion-headed daemon, or at least as having a wild-maned head which resembles that of a lion. I don't know if you'd also count the [Titan-]goddess Hekate here, who had three bodies: one of a lion, another of a horse and the third of a dog, for which reason she was called Trikephalos, "Triple-Headed."
It depend too, I think on just how you define "Titan(ides)" it seems you keep to the first generation born of Gaia and Ouranos having rights to the title? I question that reasoning sometimes, because we have only one source which says it (Hesiod).
I'm not sure if I understand correctly if you're saying that I'm restricting the term Titan([ide]s) to the first twelve children of Ouranos and Gaia. There were clearly other Titans who came after them, most of their children and some of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren having been Titans as well. In fact, taking into account how many daughters Okeanos had - i.e. the three or four thousand Okeanides, all of whom were [female] Titans - most of the divinities in Greek mythology would therefore count as Titanides. If that's not what you mean, pardon my misunderstanding. Are you rather just making a reference to how it's often mistakenly thought that the original twelve were the only Titans to be?

There are many ways to interpret why or how Zeus and his team chose to set up shop on a mountain summit. There was a point time when the Greeks imagined their country to be the centre of the Earth, with Mt Olympos at the centre of Greece. Similarly to lots of other cultures elsewhere there was the notion that mountain peaks were the "roofs of the world," with really high mountains like Olympos and others at the edges of the Earth (like the Moroccan Mt Atlas in the extreme west) were the pillars of the Sky, separating Ouranos from Gaia. In one version of the cosmology the Sky was envisioned as a solid dome, basically an upside-down bowl, covering the Earth. Mountaintops being the highest spots inside the dome, Olympos, as the highest mountain in Greece, was the likeliest residence for the gods, who also dwelt beneath this cosmic ceiling called Ouranos. The motivational reason for the situation appears to be in the Theogony, in which, during the Titans' War, Kronos set up camp on Mt Othrys in northern Greece while southwards, on the other end of the Plain of Thessalia [Thessaly], Zeus stationed himself on Mt Olympos. There might have been an auspicious element to making the fort from which the war was won into the victor's home.

Hmmm... I'd never thought of the possibility that the "heavenly" Mt Olympos was a star (like as in a πλανητων [planet], maybe an asteroid [noting that the word asteroid literally means "star-like" or "star-shaped"]?)!

I wonder, though, if ouranós and the Ionic word oûros are really linguistically related. In other forms of Greek the word for "mountain" is óros, which doesn't seem to correspond much with ouranós. But then again, I'm no expert in that field so :oops:...
I wonder if it can be found in any text, the points at which the younger Olympians children of Zeus fought by his side and became one of the twelve, certainly their ascents to Olympus to meet Zeus are noted after deeds (or misdeeds).
D'you mean in reference to the Titans' War specifically or just in general as to the timing of which child of Zeus fought in which war and became an Olympian at what point? Nonnos' Dionysiaka specifically places Ares in the Titans' War, even giving him the title "destroyer of the Titans" in Book 20. Hyginus says that Zeus was assisted by Athena, Apollon [Apollo] and Artemis during the same war. Of the great Twelve who were Zeus' offspring only Hermes seems to have been born after the end of the conflict (unless we count Dionysos, who obviously came much, much later if we accept the story about how Hestia abdicated her position among the Twelve in his favour). It would stand to reason that Hephaistos, who forged the thunder and lightning of the Cyclopes into the weapons by which Zeus' conquered Kronos, was present and an active participant in the Titanomachy. Regarding other Olympians who were Zeus' children but were not among the great Twelve, if Hephaistos had already been born during the war then perhaps his sister Hebe was also present and active thereat. Their sister Eileithyia must've been around by that point since she was one of the midwives at the birth of Apollon. According to Ovid's Fasti, Zeus also had the support of his daughters the three Fates during the war.
 
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Alejandro

Active Member

Having given this some more thought, however, I realise that my list is actually missing characters from what I think is an often misunderstood component of the war, namely the Gigantes [Giants]. Many mythologists are puzzled by what they often interpret to be a confusion of the two greatest wars in which the gods fought, i.e. the Titanomachy in primeval times and the Gigantomachy in the time of Herakles (a generation before the Trojan War). And for certain at least one ancient writer, the Roman Gaius Hyginus, does confuse the two a whole lot, just like he mixes up a lot of the characters in his Greek mythology. There are, however, other ancient authors who make plenty of explicit references specifically to Gigantes fighting against the gods during the Titanomachy, and many modern scholars, confused by this, would conclude that whichever mythographer is reporting these battles is confusing two different wars. I, on the other hand, am going to use that to update my response to the original question, since it now seems clear to me that most of those ancient mythographers, rather than being confused, are perhaps making reference to the now-lost portions of the story of the conflict between Kronos and Zeus which would have been detailed in lost epics such as the Titanomakhia [Titanomachy] by Eumelos of Korinthos or Arktinos of Miletos.

Throughout the course of Greek mythology’s timeline, there are several births of Gigantes, instances of a variety of different groups of them springing up from the Earth. There was at least one group which was born before Zeus’ time, a number of groups who came about in between the times of the Titanomachy and of Herakles, and then there’s the famous crop which was destroyed by the gods during its major attack on Olympus later called the Gigantomachy. Before Zeus was born, there was a squad of Giants who wore full suits of armour, carried an arsenal of weapons and were led by a certain Hoplodamos. Rhea recruited these guys as her bodyguards while she was pregnant with Zeus, to protect her from her own husband Kronos. When the time came for Rhea to deliver her baby, Kronos showed up ready to devour the newborn as he had done with the previous five, but Hoplodamos and his brothers attempted to deny him access. A violent battle broke out between Rhea’s husband and the Giants, and Kronos slew all the bodyguards. Nonetheless they had given Rhea enough time to swap the baby for a stone which she managed to convince Kronos that it was his child.

By the time Zeus had grown up Kronos himself had taken to conscripting Gigantes, this time for all-out war, and one of which Giants was called Sykeus. Other Gigantes whom Kronos may have drafted for the Titanomachy include Azeus, Damysos and Mylinos, the last of whom Diodoros Sikoulos seems to describe leading a rebellion against Zeus on Crete Island, where he and “his followers,” as Diodoros calls them, were destroyed. Perhaps some of the battles of the great war took place on Crete. Or could Mylinos and other Gigantes have split off from Kronos’ army to form their own faction off the mainland, opposing both the Titan and his son? The case of the rebel Olympos which Misa has mentioned is an interesting one. I wonder if Olympos raised Zeus when he was a baby and then betrayed him later on to join Kronos. Or perhaps once Zeus had become king and Olympos failed to see a difference between his tyranny and that of Kronos, he revolted against his own foster-son(?).

These are updates to my list, with individuals who I’d neglected to consider before:

13. Ekhidna’s sonAn unnamed “dragon-footed” Gigantos whom Nonnos, in the Dionysiaka, describes as the enemy of the gods, spitting venom into the Sky in such profusion that it created large clouds of poison, and who was so huge that the birds flying through the air would get caught in the vast mass of his dreadlocked hair, which hair he would then use to sweep these birds into his mouth to chew them live for dinner. Nonnos seems to be describing a peculiar apparatus in which Kronos used this Gigantos as some sort of missile or shield to counter Zeus’ thunderbolts. The Gigantos was killed by Ares.

14. Sykeus – Athenaios’ Deipnosophistai [“Philosophers at Dinner”], quoting Tryphon’s History of Plants, quoting The Farmer’s Handbook by Androtion, specifically refers to Sykeus as “one of the Titans” whose mother was Ge [Gaia], essentially suggesting the idea that there was a 13th Titan who was the child of Ouranos and Gaia, although Ouranos is not explicitly mentioned in this passage. I’m thinking that rather it is a conflation of terms and that while Sykeus was indeed Gaia’s son, he was not a Titan but rather a Gigantos who fought on the side of Kronos' Titans. (I’m borrowing part of this idea from Aaron Atsma, the author of the Theoi Project website, who seems to interpret this passage to mean that Sykeus is one of the Gigantes from the Gigantomachy, which would only mean, however, that the authors quoted by Athenaios are among those who conflate the two great wars.) Sykeus was pursued by Zeus and hidden by his mother Gaia [within her own depths?], who caused the fig-tree, sykea, to grow “for her son’s pleasure”. The city of Sykea in Cilicia was also named after him.

15. Azeus(?) – A fragment from an unnamed writer says that a Gigas [or Gigantos] named Azeus son of Gaia “grew to manhood amid the mighty battles of the Titans.” The most natural reading of this is perhaps that Azeus just happened to turn 18 or 21 while the Titanomachy was raging and not necessarily that he participated in it at all. Then again perhaps the mention of battles means that he did actually take sides, joining either Kronos or Zeus. Perhaps he was one of the defectors described by Diodoros Sikoulos…

16. Mylinos(?) – A Gigantos who Diodoros Sikoulos describes as a leader among the “robbers and impious men” killed by Zeus on Crete Island during the Titanomachy. Presumably this means he sided with Kronos, unless he had his own island operation on the side (pulling heists?), concurrent with the war.

17. Damysos(?) – the fastest runner among the Gigantes

18. Olympos(?) – A Cretan who may have been a Gigantos or a Kourete [Curete] (or a Giant Kourete?), who raised Zeus when the god was still a little kid, teaching him “divine things”, whatever those were. For some unspecified reason Olympos incited certain Gigantes to attack Zeus and was slain for it. There is no direct reference in this story to more famous characters from the Gigantomachy, so perhaps Olympos’ attack should rather be associated with the Titanomachy, similarly to Mylinos’ operation?

19. KampeA cosmic-sized female monster of the Underworld, who was composed of tens of different animals, whom Nonnos’ Dionysiaka describes as a massive millipede-like creature. Technically she was not a soldier; before Zeus was born Kronos had made her the jailer of Tartaros, to guard the entrance to the cosmic pit where he had imprisoned his younger brothers the 3 Cyclopes and the 3 Hekatonkheires. Towards the end of the Titanomachy Gaia told Zeus that he would need the help of these six uncles of his if he was to defeat his father, so he descended into the Underworld, fought against Kampe, killed her and released the six prisoners.

20. Aigaios* – Surviving fragments of the Titanomakhia seem to say that one of the 3 Hekatonkheires, namely Aigaion, who is also called Briareus, was actually some sort of Sea-Titan (or Sea-Giant) named Aigaios, who was a son of Pontos [the male personification of the Mediterranean & Black Seas] and Gaia, or of Thalassa [a female personification of the Mediterranean]. In the epic, Aigaios/Aigaion, after whom the Aegean Sea is named, is an ally, not of Zeus, but of “the Titans”, meaning Kronos most likely, although, since we know there were defections, perhaps after being released from Tartaros, the Hekatonkheiros Aigaion-Briareus actually joined Kronos’ camp before changing his mind and supporting Zeus after all. Briareus does in fact become the most important Hekatonkheiros in the surviving mythology, being wed to Poseidon’s daughter Kymopoleia, apparently as a reward for his support of Poseidon and Zeus and their siblings in the Titanomachy.


21. Akheron - A river which used to flow in the upper world before it became an Underworld river (so neither a Gigantos nor a Titan, although Akheron was one of the 3000 sons of the eldest Titan Okeanos). Akheron was not a soldier, he simply supplied Kronos' team with drinking-water during the war. After Kronos' defeat, Zeus muddied Akheron's waters and cast him into the Underworld. Akheron's now-empty riverbed was eventually refilled but exclusively with the tears of dead souls suffering punishment for their sins in the pit of Tartaros, for which reason this river was so salty. Akheron, now an infernal god, became one of the five main rivers of the world of the dead.

22.—? Other Gigantes whose names we don’t know – Kronos may have had tens or maybe even hundreds of these at his disposal. They seem to generally have been mortal… and expendable, and thus generally to not have survived the war to receive the same punishments as Kronos and the other Titanic members of the losing team.
 
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Alejandro

Active Member

So> much shorter version of the above response:
Apart from a small number of Titans (fewer than those on Zeus’ side), Kronos had several (or maybe a whole lot of) monstrous Gigantes in his army, almost none of whose names we can be sure about, and some of whom may not have been completely loyal to either party in the conflict. Kronos also enjoyed a supply water of water from the River Akheron (who eventually became an Underworld god) and he had posted Kampe, perhaps the biggest monster in the universe, to guard the entrance to Tartaros where he had imprisoned his younger brothers.
 
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Misa

Member
I'm not sure if I understand correctly if you're saying that I'm restricting the term Titan([ide]s) to the first twelve children of Ouranos and Gaia. There were clearly other Titans who came after them, most of their children and some of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren having been Titans as well. In fact, taking into account how many daughters Okeanos had - i.e. the three or four thousand Okeanides, all of whom were [female] Titans - most of the divinities in Greek mythology would therefore count as Titanides. If that's not what you mean, pardon my misunderstanding. Are you rather just making a reference to how it's often mistakenly thought that the original twelve were the only Titans to be?
Simply making reference to some people thinking the Titan(ide)s are a different "race" than the Olympians, and count only twelve of them at times. I've run across some very strange schools of thought on what makes a Titan a Titan and what makes a Olympian a Olympian, although I think the difference only a matter of title rather than race or generation. Just trying to make my thoughts on it clear, sorry to have confused it? :confused: No offense meant.

the Telkhines, obscure creatures whose nature seems to be somewhere in between god and daemon. They had dog's heads and flippers for hands (which indeed is amazing if you consider that their special skill was metallurgy - how did they hold their tools with those hands?
Oh, I like the mystery of the Telkhis, so I'm just going to talk about them for a bit - their island's destruction - and Apollo turning against them may have been one of the starts to the Titanomakhia/Gigantomakhia so some relevance I suppose. I'd had the impression that the Telkhines were based on something like a seal or otter, but that they could change shape between man and dog and this in-between shape like most sea gods and goddesses were shape-shifters ("the dogs of Actaeon?" certainly they worshiped Apollo- one of them said to build a temple to the Lycian Apollo, Telkhinia is a title of Athena and Hera and some nymphs - yet Zeus - who caused their island to flood, Apollo to turn into a wolf and slaughter them?, and Rhea are also seemingly hostile as well). They helped to overthrow Ouranos by making the sickle of Kronos (which was given to Kronos by Gaia) - parents of the Telkhines go from the blood of Ouranos and Gaia (well, if they made the sickle that caused the castration blood, not likely to be the first Telkhines).

Poseidon too is mentioned as a father of them, but if that god was intrusted to them by Rhea, and they in conjunction with Capheira, a daughter of Oceanus, brought him up - not likely, or a second (?third) generation of Telkhines was born by Poseidon from his stay with them, his trident was also made for him by them; there is also a myth that Rhea tricked Kronos at Poseidon's birth ("he was concealed by Rhea, after his birth, among a flock of lambs, and his mother pretended to have given birth to a young horse, which she gave to Cronos to devour. A well in the neighbourhood of Mantineia, where this is said to have happened, was believed, from this circumstance, to have derived the name of the "Lamb's Well," or Arne. (Paus. viii. 8. § 2.) According to Tzetzes (ad Lycoph. 644) the nurse of Poseidon bore the name of Arne; when Cronos searched after his son, Arne is said to have declared that she knew not where he was, and from her the town of Arne was believed to have received its name" Poseidon page, Theoi.com).

Arne also seems to be another name of Melanippe, daughter of Kheiron as well as being a daughter of Aeolus, by Poseidon she had Boeotus (?and a twin also called Aeolus).

I think that Kronos by the time he castrated Ouranos already had children by Rhea or was married (It makes little sense to my why Rhea would have six children by Kronos and complain of his swallowing them and plot of saving only the last, as well it was the sons of Kronos that were prophesied to overthrow him according to some - so why harm the daughters? Hades with his association with the underworld/death very likely was imagined swallowed at birth though); certainly Hera, the third daughter born to them is said to have been entrusted in the care of Okeanos and Tethys - Demeter and Hestia might have been with her, and the Horai (?Euboia, Prosymna, and Akraia; daughters of Asterion) also Temenos, the son of Pelasgos is said to have reared her, he might have been mate or son to one of the Horai/daughters of Asterion.

I think a likely son between Poseidon and a Telkhinia may have been Proteus ("old man of the sea"; "seal herder"/ "of the first (son of Poseidon?)") if the Telkhines were children of Pontos and Gaia, or Thalassa, or Tartaros and Nemesis. Certainly sometimes I think Ouranos's other name was Tartaros as Gaia was also known as Khthon (a title of the underworld deities). Known Telchinia are Makelo, Dexithea (one of the Telkhines chief Demonax/Damon's daughters, Dexithea or Dexinoe had a son by Minos - Euxantius) and probably Lysagora.

Interestingly, Halia of Rhodes is mentioned to be one of Thalassa's daughters (sometimes called a sister of the Telkhines) and Poseidon had six sons (who refused to let Aphrodite come ashore and upon whom she sent a madness upon until they raped their mother - who committed suicide/leap into the sea and Poseidon made into the Proseoous Daimones) and a daughter Rhode who with Helios had sons that are said to have went with Rhea under the title Kouretes to protect her when she gave birth to Zeus.

As for the mixing of Titanides in the Gigantomakhia, and Gigantes in the Titanomakhia; I think that shows cooperation against a common enemy ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"; also they are siblings - or perhaps as many as three "wars/battles" - one of the Titanides - one of the Gigantes, and one of both?) at it's basic it seems a battle of the rights of succession amongst siblings and sons/daughters of ruling siblings - which likely occurred or were reasoning for historic rulers, the myths following the lines of thought both for and against these successions.

I'm not so certain that all the ancient Greeks thought the world flat (a disk is flat but it is also round - and a flat surface shows what you know of the landscape near to you rather than what is not known as a globe must; certainly there are many statues of Atlas holding aloft a round globe of heavens/Ouranos - and Gaia was said to be equal to them/heavens/Ouranos so perhaps also round - and certainly I can't think of a shape for the black beyond - but if it follows atoms, stars, planets, and most galaxies it is likely round too). Think too of our modern world maps, although we know Africa is a bigger continent than America, and could swallow it and much of China, Europe, Russia, and such, on a map it's smaller than they are. I imagine too that any tower on a island that sees the curving of a horizon, notes too the rising of the east and setting in the west; while from the the north "cold" and south "dry/hot" winds; the Antikythera mechanism too points to a knowledge of star movements which few people today can boast. And, well, to give the ancients credit, what we call the ocean does encircle the earth's continent, and if it is fresh water or salty, it is still ocean and we know too little about it.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
No offense meant.
None taken :cool:

Hmmm, interesting... I'd never thought to connect the Telkhines' destruction to any major conflict between the Olympians and the Titans/Gigantes. And incidentally while I was writing up that last post, I was thinking the Telkhines' description does indeed match that of seals and otters. And, yeah, that thing which Eustathios says about them originally having been Akation's hounds who were changed into men :confused:... is just kinda weird. And certainly if they were the ones who forged Gaia's sickle they cannot have been born from Ouranos' blood nor, if they were the ones who nursed the young Poseidon, could they have been the children of this sea-god. I'd never before considered your suggestion that there might have been different generations of Telkhines rather than these merely being different versions of the same characters.
I think that Kronos by the time he castrated Ouranos already had children by Rhea or was married (It makes little sense to my why Rhea would have six children by Kronos and complain of his swallowing them and plot of saving only the last, as well it was the sons of Kronos that were prophesied to overthrow him according to some - so why harm the daughters? ... certainly Hera, the third daughter born to them is said to have been entrusted in the care of Okeanos and Tethys - Demeter and Hestia might have been with her, and the Horai (?Euboia, Prosymna, and Akraia; daughters of Asterion) also Temenos, the son of Pelasgos is said to have reared her, he might have been mate or son to one of the Horai/daughters of Asterion.
Ummm... Okay, this is a rather different take on the story, or at least of my understanding of it based on the accounts we have of it. Those accounts describe a situation in which, in the beginning, Ouranos seems to have been engaged in perpetual intercourse with Gaia, and perhaps they were locked into each other that way until their offspring were born. Or rather their eighteen children tried to emerge from their mother but were obstructed by their father's genitalia, which would make sense of the specific choice of castration as the means of dealing with Ouranos. This is often interpreted as a metaphor for a primordial union between Heaven and Earth similarly to other cosmogonies, when the heavenly and the terrestrial were so close together that there was hardly a distinction between the two. The product of these two elements, their offspring, were consequently suffocating in between them and decided to separate the two elements. This was achieved by stopping the intercourse between Ouranos and Gaia using a means so violent that, in his agony, Ouranos reflexively lifted his body far away from his wife, and since then has been propped up away from her using pillars which more often than not have taken the form of mountains. Before the separation of those two primordial elements, life on [or in the] Earth (and in the Air), was barely possible. Thus I imagine the 18 cosmic-sized children, as-yet-unborn, all bunched up together in anguish in the birth canal, unable to move downwards back into the womb, which had shrunk to push them outwards; nor were they able to move upwards out of the canal, which was blocked by Ouranos' organ. In such a situation I don't see any of the unborn children able to, much less trying, to reproduce :(

Beyond my (maybe quirky) elaboration of that bit, Hesiod's Theogony implies that the Titans only got married after Ouranos' castration. It was after Ouranos' pronouncement concerning how he would be avenged on the Titans (in between Lines 207 & 210) that Kronos replaced him as king (the next time Kronos appears on the scene after the vengeance-curse passage is in Line 453, where Rhea is "subjected in love to" him). Once Kronos was king, more prophecies came that his offspring would overthrow him, and so he was careful to swallow all his children, not just the boys (see in between Lines 453 & 491). However, if the Theogony passages seem ambiguous as to whether it was not only the boys whom Kronos, swallowed, check Book 1 of Apollodoros' Bibliotheka, whose writer tells us in no uncertain terms that Hestia was the first child to be swallowed and the last to be regurgitated when Zeus tricked their father into vomiting the offspring whom he had swallowed. Apollodoros also gives us the birth sequence, telling us that the girls were born first and then the boys. From the process, he says, of all of them being devoured (Hestia, then Demeter, then Hera, then Haides, then Poseidon and then the stone decoy) and later on disgorged, the stone decoy which had replaced Zeus (which decoy Hesykhios calls Baitylos [Baetylus]) became Kronos' firstborn "child" while Hestia became his lastborn, reversing the sequence. See also the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite about Hetsia being, simultaneously, both the first and last child of Kronos.

The story about Poseidon having been replaced by a foal at his birth and been reared by Arne is a variant myth, different from the mainstream one in which he does get swallowed by Kronos. And the references to him being nursed by Kapheira and the Telkhines while Hera is nursed by Okeanos and Tethys, the daughters of Asterion, the Horai &/or Temenos, are describing what happened after they were spewed out by their father. Cf. the myths of Athena's youth; this goddess was born from Zeus' head full-grown and all kitted out with weaponry and battle armour. Nonetheless she was nursed by Triton or Alalkomeneus. Having been swallowed by their father immediately after birth, Zeus' older siblings may not have had any opportunity to grow, or even if they did they might have been severely stunted or at least horribly uncomfortable like their parents, uncles and aunts had been in Gaia's womb during Ouranos' reign, so it should actually make sense that they needed nurses for awhile after their "second birth."

Why would Rhea try to save only Zeus if the other children had already all been devoured? Well, it sounds as though she, like her mother before her, may have found herself, like a lot of people throughout history, even today, stuck in an abusive relationship where both she and her children were mistreated. She may have felt powerless up until the point at which she asserted herself and did what she could to save her family. I don't know that we are given a specific motivation for why only Zeus and not the first five but Hesiod does say that she was seized by "unceasing grief" as a result of Kronos' actions. Thereafter she consulted her parents about the situation and how she might hide her sixth child from Kronos, and it was only then that they revealed the child's destiny to their daughter, informing her that Zeus would one day supplant Kronos. Like with her recruitment of Giant bodyguards during her sixth pregnancy, perhaps Rhea did attempt, before then, to protect the kids from their father and then failed and suffered violence for it like the Gigantes whom Kronos slaughtered.
I think a likely son between Poseidon and a Telkhinia may have been Proteus ("old man of the sea"; "seal herder"/ "of the first (son of Poseidon?)")
:) I like this idea.
Certainly sometimes I think Ouranos's other name was Tartaros as Gaia was also known as Khthon (a title of the underworld deities).
I have my doubts about this. Pretty much every mythographer who cites Tartaros makes a distinction between him and Ouranos (one interpretation of Hyginus' parentage for Tartaros would even mean that he [Tartaros] was a son of Ouranos and Gaia), although cosmologically speaking they do appear to be upside-down versions or mirrors of each other; and I have always liked the idea that Tartaros is a doppelgänger of Ouranos. Khthṓn, however, is simply a synonym for gaĩa/, and depending on context can mean earth, ground, land, soil or even country. So e.g., autokhthones are those who have sprung up from the khthṓn (soil/ ground/ land) itself, not necessarily the Underworld.
As for the mixing of Titanides in the Gigantomakhia, and Gigantes in the Titanomakhia; I think that shows cooperation against a common enemy ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend"; also they are siblings - or perhaps as many as three "wars/battles" - one of the Titanides - one of the Gigantes, and one of both?) at it's basic it seems a battle of the rights of succession amongst siblings and sons/daughters of ruling siblings - which likely occurred or were reasoning for historic rulers, the myths following the lines of thought both for and against these successions.
Makes sense!
I'm not so certain that all the ancient Greeks thought the world flat...
I agree, and I'm sure there were those who didn't think this way, together with other peoples who had technologies which are now unknown to us in the modern day. My cosmological description was just a crude and perhaps cartoonish sketch reconstruction of the mythological records left by a few writers who I don't think represented some monolithic worldview held by all the people all the time; a lot of the mythology is of course a gross oversimplification of what different people may have thought or believed back in the day.
 
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Misa

Member
Those accounts describe a situation in which, in the beginning, Ouranos seems to have been engaged in perpetual intercourse with Gaia, and they perhaps they were locked into each other that way until their offspring were born. Or rather their eighteen children tried to emerge from their mother but were obstructed by their father's genitalia, which would make sense of the specific choice of castration as the means of dealing with Ouranos. This is often interpreted as a metaphor for a primordial union between Heaven and Earth similarly to other cosmogonies, when the heavenly and the terrestrial were so close together that there was hardly a distinction between the two. The product of these two elements, their offspring, were consequently suffocating in between them and decided to separate the two elements. This was achieved by stopping the intercourse between Ouranos and Gaia using a means so violent that, in his agony, Ouranos reflexively lifted his body far away from his wife, and since then has been propped up away from her using pillars which more often than not have taken the form of mountains. Before the separation of those two primordial elements, life on [or in the] Earth (and in the Air), was barely possible. Thus I imagine the 18 cosmic-sized children, as-yet-unborn, all bunched up together in anguish in the birth canal, unable to move downwards back into the womb, which had shrunk to push them outwards; nor were they able to move upwards out of the canal, which was blocked by Ouranos' organ. In such a situation I don't see any of the unborn children able to, much less trying, to reproduce
That's quirky, and a little disturbing to imagine too. I always sort of thought that the older primeval gods and goddesses sort of took in the Titans as the "secret place" within/on Gaia - Okeanos and Tethys to Hydros/Pontos and Thalassa (older sea goddess, Gaia's sister); Koios and Phoibe to Aither (given that their grandchildren are Artemis, Apollo, and Hecate) Hyperion and Theia to Hemera (and Aither too, most likely) Iapetus and Mnemosyne with Erebos (there is a pool in a Mystery called after Mnemosyne) and Krios and Kronos with Nyx (a goddess who was ruler of the universe before Ouranos, and some accounts make the mother of Ouranos) Rhea and Themis to the Ourea (Oreios of Mount Othrys?); as Gaia is described as calling her children together and asking them to act against their father Ouranos for her sake (and the Hekatonkheires and Kyklopes who were put by Ouranos in Erebos? or Pontos) and arming Kronos with the sickle. Or perhaps they were all living under ground in caves.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
I've always taken the "secret place" which Hesiod mentions to be a euphemism for Gaia's reproductive organs. But Apollodoros' Bibliotheka seems to allow for your elaboration/interpretation of events, where he has Hesiod's birth order reversed and the character motivations somewhat different. In the Theogony the 12 Titans are born first followed by the 3 Cyclopes and then lastly come the 3 Hekatonkheires. Ouranos' hiding of all these children in the secret place causes Gaia to groan at being "straitened," which in archaic terms literally means to be squeezed. Ouranos also does not suffer his children to come up into the light, implying a direct connection between Gaia's squeezing and her children being hidden inside her. This would also prevent them from being taken in by anyone else. Also according to Hesiod it is Gaia herself who fashions the sickle which Kronos uses to mutilate his father.

In the Bibliotheka, the Hekatonkheires are born first and then the Cyclopes, followed by the Titans. The first six children - the 2 sets of triplet giants - are cast into Tartaros by Ouranos. (Here's another instance of a clear distinction between Tartaros and Ouranos, unless we took this as a more veiled occurrence of the family's culture of swallowing each other up... literally. Ouranos' son Kronos swallows his own offspring and then Zeus swallows his own pregnant wife Metis, who, ironically, gave him the means by which to release his siblings from Kronos' bowels before her own unfortunate end-position. So if Ouranos = Tartaros then perhaps we can say Ouranos set the precedent by swallowing his own offspring first?) And it is on account of this that Gaia induces the Titans to gang up on their father. Gaia gives Kronos an adamantium ;) sickle (no origin for it mentioned here beyond that) and after the Titans' attack on Ouranos they release their older brothers from Tartaros and crown Kronos king. But then Kronos, seemingly immediately afterwards, casts the released brothers back into their prison. Similarly to Hesiod's account, it is only at this point in Apollodoros' narrative that Kronos marries Rhea and they have children. On account of prophecies from both his parents that he shall be dethroned by his own son, Kronos takes to swallowing all of his children at their births. Perhaps Apollodoros knows of an alternate tradition from Hesiod's, in which the Titans, immediately after their birth, had more freedom of movement than seems to be the case with the Theogony's Titans.

And speaking of multiple Titanomachies (or perhaps my pluralisation here is unnecessary since the original Greek word Titanomakhia already implies multiplicity: “Titan-Battles” or “Titan-Wars”), if many different wars are in fact what is meant by the different major conflicts mentioned between Titans and Zeus’ régime, how many of these were there?

There’s the first and most famous one: between Kronos and Zeus, in which some [maybe many] Gigantes are involved.

Then there’s the story of how Zeus begat upon his own daughter Kore, a beautifully monstrous shape-shifting son named Zagreus, who was cut to pieces by unnamed Titans at Hera’s behest. (These Titans used an infernal or chthonic knife for this action, reminding of the dismemberment of Ouranos using a blade fashioned by Chthon/Khthon.) There are different versions of what happened thereafter. Zeus fought against his son’s murderers in a long battle or war and thereafter cast them into Tartaros or used his lightning to reduce them to ashes. In the Orphic myth of the creation of humankind these ashes were then mixed with some earth and water and humankind was made from the concoction. This is supposed to explain why human beings were naturally rebellious towards the gods, because, as The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Micropædia puts it, in them was “combined an earthly (Titanic) nature that had to be suppressed and a heavenly (Dionysiac) nature that had to be cultivated. This was accomplished by living an Orphic life, which included abstention from meat, wine and sexual intercourse.” (Clearly the term “Dionysiac” here must be derived from a very different Dionysos than the Greek god of wine and drunkenness.)

Hyginus mentions a similar Titanomachy in which Hera, jealous of Zeus’ son Epaphos, causes Epaphos to be slain while hunting and incites the Titans to stage a coup d’état so that they might restore Kronos himself to the throne! The Titans attempt to climb up to Heaven but are cast headlong into Tartaros by Zeus, who is assisted in this effort by Athena, Apollon and Artemis. Aaron Atsma thinks that this is another version of the Zagreus myth, in which Epaphos is actually Osiris, the Egyptian Zagreus-Dionysos, who was cut to pieces by his own brother the “Titan” Seth (Typhoeus).

When Typhoeus rose up against the Olympians, which seems to have been towards the end of the famous Gigantomachy, he made many grievous threats against all the gods, including plans to restore the Titans’ dominion over the universe.

Are there other instances of Titanomachy?
 
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Myrddin

Well-Known Member
Alejandro, though I gave it a quick scan, TLDR! (Now that I know what it means, I can use it. ;))

E. M.
 

Misa

Member
I think the biggest problem anyone faces in pinning down what happened and when during the Titanomakhia is the fact that Greek mythology does not have a timeline other than a sort of rough genealogy and even that is iffy. So what might seem like a random tussle between Olympians and Giants or Titans might have more significance to the whole - or might not. I'll put a link of Giants and Titans from Theoi.com, browse through it and see what you spot I suppose.
Titans
Giants

It's interesting to me that the Aloadae: Otus and Ephialtes, are called Gigantes, they were the sons of Poseidon and Iphimedeia, or Iphimedeia and Aloeus, but their mother's father was Triopas and her uncle was the Aloeus who she was married to her daughter with him was Pancratis. Mother and daughter were kidnapped and later rescued by the Aloadae, but Pancratis died soon after - and given Pancratis's name "all power/strength/might" it might be they did not name themselves for their uncle/stepfather, but for their sister who was the daughter of their uncle. It also might have been cause to storm Olympus, or capture Ares who was the patron of the Thracians and who was titled Thrax or had a son named so.

The sons of Canace (daughter of Aeolus son of Hellen son of Deucalion son of Prometheus) by Poseidon were Epopeus, Hopleus, Nireus, Aloeus and Triopas.

Triopas I find interesting, Wikipedia says he destroyed a temple of Demeter in order to obtain materials for roofing his own house, and was punished by insatiable hunger as well as being plagued by a snake which inflicted illness on him. Eventually Demeter placed him and the snake among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus to remind others of his crime and punishment. His children by Myrmidon's daughter Hiscilla, were Iphimedeia, Phorbas and Erysichthon.

Erysichthon did not learn from his father Triopas's example (or he wanted revenge) in not angering Demeter, he ordered all trees in the sacred grove of Demeter to be cut down. One huge oak was covered with votive wreaths, a symbol of every prayer Demeter had granted, and so men refused to cut it down. Erysichthon grabbed an axe and cut it down himself, killing a dryad nymph in the process. The nymph's dying words were a curse on Erysichthon.

Demeter responded to the nymph's curse and punished him by entreating Limos, the spirit of unrelenting and insatiable hunger, to place herself in his stomach. Food acted like fuel on a fire: The more he ate, the hungrier he got. Erysichthon sold all his possessions to buy food, but was still hungry. At last he sold his own daughter Mestra into slavery. Mestra was freed from slavery by her former lover Poseidon, who gave her the gift of shape-shifting into any creature at will to escape her bonds. Erysichthon used her shape-shifting ability to sell her numerous times to make money to feed himself, but no amount of food was enough. Eventually, Erysichthon ate himself in hunger.

Phorbas was a hero of the island of Rhodes, was sometimes confounded with the Phlegyan Phorbas. When the people of the island of Rhodes fell victim to a plague of masses of serpents (may have been dragons or simply snakes), an oracle directed them to call on a man named Phorbas. Phorbas cleansed the island of the snakes and in gratitude the Rhodians venerated him as a hero. For his achievement he won a place among the stars as the constellation Serpentarius or Ophiuchus by Apollon.
 
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