Giants

The Giants hurled rocks and burning trees at Olympus from the plain of Phlegra. Gaia urged them to war because Zeus had confined the Titans in Tartarus. They had great size and terrible strength. Some tellings gave them serpent tails or serpent feet. Their attack pressed the Olympian gods hard, and the gods learned that a mortal had to deliver the fatal blows. Zeus called Heracles to their aid and used his thunderbolts against the Giants.

Heracles joined the battle and shot the Giants with arrows. Tiresias had foretold that he would kill them beneath his rushing arrows. Pindar named Porphyrion as their king and said that Apollo’s bow overcame him. In another telling, Porphyrion attacked Heracles and Hera after Zeus caused him to fall in love with Hera. Zeus struck Porphyrion with a thunderbolt, and Heracles mortally wounded him with an arrow. The gods and Heracles then killed the other Giants. Apollo shot Ephialtes in the left eye, and Heracles shot him in the right. Dionysus killed Eurytus with his ivy staff or thyrsus. Hecate singed Clytius with her torches. Hephaestus burned Mimas with red-hot metal. Athena crushed Enceladus with a stone, and she killed Pallas. In other tellings, Athena fought Enceladus with her gorgon shield, Zeus burned Mimas with a thunderbolt, and Dionysus killed an unnamed Giant with his ivy staff.

The defeated Giants did not all vanish. Some remained beneath mountains and volcanic islands, where their presence explained eruptions and earthquakes. Athena buried Enceladus beneath Mount Etna. Poseidon crushed Polybotes beneath an island. In one telling, Zeus and Heracles killed Porphyrion when he attacked Hera. Ovid gave a different aftermath. Gaia gathered the blood that the Giants had shed on the battlefield and brought forth new human-shaped beings. They kept the Giants’ hatred of the gods and their desire for slaughter.

Tityos saw Leto when she came to Pytho. Overcome by desire, he seized her and tried to embrace her. Leto called for her children, Apollo and Artemis. They answered her summons and shot the giant with their arrows. One account says that Apollo also struck him with the blade of his golden sword.

Tityos was the son of Zeus and Elare, daughter of Orchomenos. After Zeus lay with Elare, he hid her beneath the earth because he feared Hera. Tityos was born there and brought up into the world. He was enormous in size. Another account calls him the child of Gaia, or Tellus, the Earth.

Tityos did not escape punishment after his death. In Hades, or Tartarus, he was fixed to the ground. Vultures tore at his liver, or at his heart, which grew again so that the torment continued. One description places a vulture on each side of him. They reached down towards his bowels, and Tityos could not drive them away.

Homer describes his body as stretching over nine plethra, about nine hundred feet. Virgil gives the measure as nine acres. The accounts also differ over the attackers. Some say that Apollo and Artemis killed Tityos together, while Pindar says that Artemis hunted him down with darts for attempting to violate her mother. In each version, the attack on Leto leads to Tityos’s death and his unending punishment in the underworld.