So perhaps do Callimachus and Philostratus, since they both make Aegaeon the cause of earthquakes, as was often said about the Giants (see below). Ovid also seems to confuse the Hundred-Handers with the Giants, whom he gives a "hundred arms". For example, Hyginus includes the names of three Titans, Coeus, Iapetus, and Astraeus, along with Typhon and the Aloadae, in his list of Giants, and Ovid seems to conflate the Gigantomachy with the later siege of Olympus by the Aloadae. This confusion extended to other opponents of the Olympians, including the huge monster Typhon, the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, whom Zeus finally defeated with his thunderbolt, and the Aloadae, the large, strong and aggressive brothers Otus and Ephialtes, who piled Pelion on top of Ossa in order to scale the heavens and attack the Olympians (though in the case of Ephialtes there was probably a Giant with the same name). Though distinct in early traditions, Hellenistic and later writers often confused or conflated the Giants and their Gigantomachy with an earlier set of offspring of Gaia and Uranus, the Titans and their war with the Olympian gods, the Titanomachy. The first century Latin writer Hyginus has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, another primordial Greek deity. Later the term "gegeneis" ("earthborn") became a common epithet of the Giants. The 6th–5th century BC lyric poet Bacchylides calls the Giants "sons of the Earth". Pausanias, the 2nd century AD geographer, read these lines of the Odyssey to mean that, for Homer, the Giants were a race of mortal men. Odysseus describes the Laestrygonians (another race encountered by Odysseus in his travels) as more like Giants than men. Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Alcinous says that the Phaiakians, like the Cyclopes and the Giants, are "near kin" to the gods. Homer has Giants among the ancestors of the Phaiakians, a race of men encountered by Odysseus, their ruler Alcinous being the son of Nausithous, who was the son of Poseidon and Periboea, the daughter of the Giant king Eurymedon. There are three brief references to the Gigantes in Homer's Odyssey, though it's not entirely clear that Homer and Hesiod understood the term to mean the same thing. The mythographer Apollodorus also has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, though he makes no connection with Uranus' castration, saying simply that Gaia "vexed on account of the Titans, brought forth the Giants". the great Giants." From these same drops of blood also came the Erinyes (Furies) and the Meliai (ash tree nymphs), while the severed genitals of Uranus falling into the sea resulted in a white foam from which Aphrodite grew. When Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus castrated his father, and "the bloody drops that gushed forth received, and as the seasons moved round she bore. Therefore, Gaia made a sickle of adamant which she gave to Cronus, the youngest of her Titan sons, and hid him (presumably still inside Gaia's body) to wait in ambush. However, Uranus hated his children and, as soon as they were born, he imprisoned them inside of Gaia, causing her much distress. According to Hesiod, Gaia, mating with Uranus, bore many children: the first generation of Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hundred-Handers. The name "Gigantes" is usually taken to imply "earth-born", and Hesiod's Theogony makes this explicit by having the Giants be the offspring of Gaia (Earth). The vanquished Giants were said to be buried under volcanoes and to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. In later traditions, the Giants were often confused with other opponents of the Olympians, particularly the Titans, an earlier generation of large and powerful children of Gaia and Uranus. 380 BC) show Gigantes with snakes for legs. Īrchaic and Classical representations show Gigantes as man-sized hoplites (heavily armed ancient Greek foot soldiers) fully human in form. According to Hesiod, the Giants were the offspring of Gaia (Earth), born from the blood that fell when Uranus (Sky) was castrated by his Titan son Cronus. They were known for the Gigantomachy (or Gigantomachia), their battle with the Olympian gods. In Greek and Roman mythology, the Giants, also called Gigantes ( Greek: Γίγαντες, Gígantes, singular: Γίγας, Gígas), were a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size. Poseidon (left) holding a trident, with the island Nisyros on his shoulder, battling a Giant (probably Polybotes), red-figure cup c.
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