Gigantomachy

Gleaming armour and long spears mark the Giants who give the Gigantomachy its name. The term refers to the war between these large, savage beings and Zeus with the Olympian gods. They are described as immensely strong, aggressive and insolent. In Apollodorus, they have long hair and beards, with serpents’ scales covering the lower parts of their bodies. Some accounts call them sons of Earth, while Hyginus makes them children of Gaia and Tartarus. Other traditions connect their birth with the blood shed when Uranus was castrated.

The Gigantomachy belongs to the myths of the struggle for control of the cosmos. Gaia urged the Giants against the Olympians, whose rule they threatened. In one account, the conflict followed Alcyoneus’s theft of Helios’s cattle and Gaia’s attempt to make him immortal. The Giants fought Zeus and his siblings, with Heracles aiding the gods because a mortal was needed to defeat them. The Giants were overcome, and some were said to lie buried beneath volcanoes, causing eruptions and earthquakes. Ancient writers sometimes confused this war with the Olympians’ earlier battle against the Titans.