In Greek and Roman mythology, the Giants, also called Gigantes (Greek: Γίγαντες, Gígantes, Γίγας, Gígas), were a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size, known for the Gigantomachy (also spelled Gigantomachia), their battle with the Olympian gods.Hansen, pp. 177–179; Gantz, pp. 445–454. As for their size: Hansen p. 177: "Hesiod describes them as being "great," referring perhaps to their stature, but the Giants are not always represented as being huge. Although the word giants derives ultimately from the Greek Gigantes, the most persistent traits of the Gigantes are strength and hubristic aggression." 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.Hesiod, Theogony 185. Hyginus, Fabulae Preface gives Tartarus as the father of the Giants. A parallel to the Giants' birth is the birth of Aphrodite from the similarly fertilized sea.
Archaic and Classical representations show Gigantes as man-sized hoplites (heavily armed ancient Greek foot soldiers) fully human in form.Gantz, pp. 446, 447. Later representations (after c. 380 BC) show Gigantes with snakes for legs.Gantz, p. 453; Hanfmann 1992, The Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. "Giants"; Frazer 1898b, note to Pausanias 8.29.3 "That the giants have serpents instead of feet" pp. 315–316. 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.
The vanquished Giants were said to be buried under volcanoes and to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Origins The name "Gigantes" is usually taken to imply "earth-born",Hard, p. 86; Gantz, p. 16; Merry, Homer's Odyssey 7.59; Douglas Harper mentions that a Pre-Greek origin has also been proposed ("giant". Online Etymology Dictionary). and Hesiod's Theogony makes this explicit by having the Giants be the offspring of Gaia (Earth). According to Hesiod, Gaia, mating with Uranus, bore many children: the first generation of Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hundred-Handers.Hesiod, Theogony 132–153 However, Uranus hated his children and, as soon as they were born, he imprisoned them inside Gaia, causing her much distress. 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.Hesiod, Theogony 154–175; Gantz, p. 10. When Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus castrated his father, and "the bloody drops that gushed forth [Gaia] received, and as the seasons moved round she bore ... the great Giants."Hesiod, Theogony 176 ff. 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. 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".Apollodorus, 1.6.1; Hansen, p. 178.
There are three brief references to the Gigantes in Homer's Odyssey, though it is not entirely clear that Homer and Hesiod understood the term to mean the same thing.Gantz, p. 446. Ogden, p. 82 n. 74 says that the "Odyssey's Giants stand a little outside the remainder of the tradition, in so far as they are ethnologized into a wild, arrogant, and doomed race, formerly presided over by a king Eurymedon." Hanfmann 1937, p. 175, sees in the "conflicting" descriptions of Homer and Hesiod, "two different local traditions". 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.Homer, Odyssey 7.56–63. Alcaeus and Acusilaus make the Phaiakians, like the Giants, offspring of the castration of Uranus, Gantz, p. 16. Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Alcinous says that the Phaiakians, like the Cyclopes and the Giants, are "near kin" to the gods.Homer, Odyssey 7.199–207. Odysseus describes the Laestrygonians (another race encountered by Odysseus in his travels) as more like Giants than men.Homer, Odyssey 10.119–120. 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.Pausanias, 8.29.1–4. Smith, William, "Gigantes" and Hanfmann 1992, The Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. "Giants", following Pausanias, both assert that, for Homer, the Giants were a "savage race of men". For the mythographer Diodorus Siculus, the Giants were also a race of men, see 4.21.5, Gantz, p. 449.
The 6th–5th century BC lyric poet Bacchylides calls the Giants "sons of the Earth".Bacchylides, 15.63; Castriota, pp. 233–234. Later the term "gegeneis" ("earthborn") became a common epithet of the Giants."Gegeneis", Brills New Pauly; Crusius, p.93; Batrachomyomachia 7 (pp. 542–543); Sophocles, Women of Trachis 1058; Euripides, The Phoenician Women 1131; Lycophron, Alexandra 127 (pp. 504–505), 1408 (pp. 610–611). The first century Latin writer Hyginus has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, another primordial Greek deity.Hyginus, Fabulae Preface. Latin
Confusion with Titans and others Though distinct in early traditions,Gantz, p. 450. 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.Smith, William, "Gigantes"; Gantz, p. 447; Hansen p. 178, Grimal, p. 171; Tripp, p. 250; Morford, pp. 82–83. A probable early confusion (or at least a possible cause of later confusion) can be seen in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris 221–224 and Hecuba 466–474, see Torrance, p. 155 n. 74. Later examples include Callimachus, Hymn 4 (to Delos) 173 ff. (pp. 98–99) (see Vian and Moore 1988 p. 193; Mineur, p. 170). This confusion extended to other opponents of the Olympians, including the huge monster Typhon,Rose, The Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. "Typhon, Typhoeus"; Fontenrose, p. 80. 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).Gantz, pp. 450–451. For example, Hyginus includes the names of three Titans, Coeus, Iapetus, and Astraeus, along with Typhon and the Aloadae, in his list of Giants,Hyginus, Fabulae Preface. For other examples of Typhon as a Giant, see Horace, Odes 3.4.53, (which has Typhon battling Athena, alongside the Giants Mimas, Porphyrion, and Enceladus); Manilius, Astronomica 2.874–880 (pp. 150–151); Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.176 (I pp. 16–17), 1.220 (I pp. 18–19), 1.244 (I pp. 20–21), 1.263 (I pp. 22–23), 1.291 (I pp. 24–25). and Ovid seems to conflate the Gigantomachy with the later siege of Olympus by the Aloadae.Hansen, p. 178; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.151–162. See also Horace, Odes 3.4.42 ff., with Lyne p. 51. Plato had already associated the Aloadae with the Giants, Symposium 190b–c.
Ovid also seems to confuse the Hundred-Handers with the Giants, whom he gives a "hundred arms".Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.182–184: "The time when serpent footed giants strove / to fix their hundred arms on captive Heaven" (see Anderson, p. 170, note to line 184 "centum with bracchia"), Fasti 4.593, with Fazer's note. So perhaps do Callimachus and Philostratus, since they both make Aegaeon the cause of earthquakes, as was often said about the Giants (see below).Callimachus, Hymn 4 (to Delos) 141–146; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.6.
Descriptions Homer describes the Giant king Eurymedon as "great-hearted" (μεγαλήτορος), and his people as "insolent" (ὑπερθύμοισι) and "froward" (ἀτάσθαλος).Homer, Odyssey 7.58–60. The translations given are A.T. Murray's. Richard Lattimore translates ὑπερθύμοισι as "high-hearted" and ἀτάσθαλος as "recklessly daring". See also Liddell and Scott, μεγαλήτωρ ("greathearted"), ὑπέρθυμος ("overweening"), and ἀτάσθαλος ("reckless, presumptuous, wicked"). Hesiod calls the Giants "strong" (κρατερῶν) and "great" (μεγάλους) which may or may not be a reference to their size.Hesiod, Theogony 50, 185; Liddell and Scott κρατερός, μέγας; Hansen, p. 177. Though a possible later addition, the Theogony also has the Giants born "with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands".Gantz, p. 446.
Other early sources characterize the Giants by their excesses. Pindar describes the excessive violence of the Giant Porphyrion as having provoked "beyond all measure".Pindar, Pythian 8.12–18. Bacchylides calls the Giants arrogant, saying that they were destroyed by "Hybris" (the Greek word hubris personified).Bacchylides, 15.50 ff.; Castriota, p. 139, pp. 233–234. The earlier seventh century BC poet Alcman perhaps had already used the Giants as an example of hubris, with the phrases "vengeance of the gods" and "they suffered unforgettable punishments for the evil they did" being possible references to the Gigantomachy.Alcman fragment 1 Poetarum melicorum Graecorum fragmenta, see Cairns, p. 310; Wilkinson, p. 142; Ferrari, pp. 28, 109, 151 ff.; Hanfmann 1937, pp. 475–476.
Homer's comparison of the Giants to the Laestrygonians is suggestive of similarities between the two races. The Laestrygonians, who "hurled ... rocks huge as a man could lift", certainly possessed great strength, and possibly great size, as their king's wife is described as being as big as a mountain.According to Gantz, p. 446: "In all, the account rather suggests that the huge bulk of Antiphates' wife is not typical of the Laistrygones as a whole. But they are clearly thought of as good-sized, although whether it is in this respect that they are like the Gigantes and unlike men we cannot say; the Odyssey's emphasis might be thought to fall more on their uncivilized behjavior"
Over time, descriptions of the Giants make them less human, more monstrous and more "gigantic". According to Apollodorus the Giants had great size and strength, a frightening appearance, with long hair and beards and scaly feet.Apollodorus, 1.6.1. Ovid makes them "serpent-footed" with a "hundred arms",Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.182–184: "The time when serpent footed giants strove / to fix their hundred arms on captive Heaven"; Newlands, p. 81. Here Ovid has apparently conflated the Giants with the Hundred-Handers, see Anderson, p. 170, note to line 184 "centum with bracchia". Compare with Fasti 5.35–37, where Ovid says "Earth brought forth the Giants, a fierce brood, enormous monsters, who durst assault Jove's mansion; she gave them a thousand hands, and snakes for legs". and Nonnus has them "serpent-haired".Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.18 (I, pp. 4–5).
The Gigantomachy
The most important divine struggle in Greek mythology was the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos.Moore 1985, p. 21. It is primarily for this battle that the Giants are known, and its importance to Greek culture is attested by the frequent depiction of the Gigantomachy in Greek art.
Early sources