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| The Fall of the
Titans by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem
(1596–1598). |
Titans
In Greek mythology, the Titans (Greek: Τιτᾶνες, Titânes,
singular: Τιτάν, -ήν, Titân) were the pre-Olympian gods.
According to the Theogony of Hesiod, they were the
twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky)
and his mother, Gaia (Earth), with six male Titans:
Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus,
and six female Titans, called the Titanides (Greek:
Τιτανίδες, Titanídes; also Titanesses): Theia, Rhea,
Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. Cronus mated with
his older sister Rhea and together they became the
parents of the first generation of Olympians: The six
siblings Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, and
Hera. Some descendants of the Titans, such as
Prometheus, Helios, and Leto, are sometimes also called
Titans.
The Titans were the former gods, the generation of gods
preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of
the Greek succession myth, which told how Cronus seized
power from his father Uranus, and ruled the cosmos with
the Titans as his subordinates, and how Cronus and the
Titans were in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling
pantheon of gods, by Zeus and the Olympians, in a
ten-year war called the Titanomachy. As a result of this
war of the gods, Cronus and the vanquished Titans were
banished from the upper world, being held imprisoned,
under guard in Tartarus, although apparently, some of
the Titans were allowed to remain free. |
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Genealogy
Hesiod's genealogy
According to Hesiod, the Titan offspring of Uranus and
Gaia were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus,
Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and
Cronus. Eight of the Titan brothers and sisters married
each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe,
Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two
Titan brothers married outside their immediate family.
Iapetus married his niece Clymene, the daughter of
Oceanus and Tethys, while Crius married his half-sister
Eurybia, the daughter of Gaia and Pontus. The two
remaining Titan sisters, Themis and Mnemosyne, became
wives of their nephew Zeus.
From Oceanus and Tethys came the three thousand river
gods, and three thousand Oceanid nymphs. From Coeus and
Phoebe came Leto, another wife of Zeus, and Asteria.
From Crius and Eurybia came Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.
From Hyperion and Theia came the celestial
personifications Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos
(Dawn). From Iapetus and Clymene came Atlas, Menoetius,
Prometheus, and Epimetheus. From Cronus and Rhea came
the Olympians: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon,
and Zeus. By Zeus, Themis bore the three Horae (Hours),
and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne bore the
nine Muses.
While the descendants of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys,
Cronus and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (i.e. the river
gods, the Oceanids, the Olympians, the Horae, the Moirai,
and the Muses) are not normally considered to be Titans,
descendants of the other Titans, notably: Leto, Helios,
Atlas and Prometheus, are themselves sometimes referred
to as Titans. |
|
Former gods
The Titans, as a group, represent a pre-Olympian order.
Hesiod uses the expression "the former gods" (theoi
proteroi) in reference to the Titans. They were the
banished gods, who were no longer part of the upper
world. Rather they were the gods who dwelt underground
in Tartarus, and as such, they may have been thought of
as "gods of the underworld", who were the antithesis of,
and in opposition to, the Olympians, the gods of the
heavens. Hesiod called the Titans "earth-born"
(chthonic), and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Hera
prays to the Titans "who dwell beneath the earth",
calling on them to aid her against Zeus, just as if they
were chthonic spirits. In a similar fashion, in the
Iliad, Hera, upon swearing an oath by the underworld
river Styx, "invoked by name all the gods below Tartarus,
that are called Titans" as witnesses.
They were the older gods, but not, apparently, as was
once thought, the old gods of an indigenous group in
Greece, historically displaced by the new gods of Greek
invaders. Rather, they were a group of gods, whose
mythology at least, seems to have been borrowed from the
Near East. These imported gods gave context and provided
a backstory for the Olympian gods, explaining where
these Greek Olympian gods had come from, and how they
had come to occupy their position of supremacy in the
cosmos. The Titans were the previous generation, and
family of gods, whom the Olympians had to overthrow, and
banish from the upper world, in order to become the
ruling pantheon of Greek gods. |
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Overthrown
The Titans play a key role in an important part of Greek
mythology, the succession myth. It told how the Titan
Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew Uranus,
and how in turn Zeus, by waging and winning a great
ten-year war pitting the new gods against the old gods,
called the Titanomachy ("Titan war"), overthrew Cronus
and his fellow Titans, and was eventually established as
the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos.
Hesiod
According to the standard version of the succession
myth, given in Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus initially
produced eighteen children with Gaia: the twelve Titans,
the three Cyclopes, and the three Hecatoncheires
(Hundred-Handers), but hating them, he hid them away
somewhere inside Gaia. Angry and in distress, Gaia
fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her
children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus was
willing. So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush", gave him an
adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with
Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father. This
enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume
supreme command of the cosmos, with the Titans as his
subordinates.
Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from
Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control.
Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of
Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus
married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of the
children she birthed: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades,
Poseidon, and Zeus (in that order), to Rhea's great
sorrow. However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea
begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save
Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus,
and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep
in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion. Meanwhile, Rhea gave
Cronus a huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he
swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's
children.
Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified
trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children.
Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently
still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the
Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined
them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon, the
thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia. A great war
was begun, the Titanomachy, for control of the cosmos.
The Titans fought from Mount Othrys, while the Olympians
fought from Mount Olympus. In the tenth year of that
great war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the
Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans,
helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury
of his thunderbolt at the Titans, defeating them and
throwing them into Tartarus, with the Hundred-Handers as
their guards. |
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