Hecatoncheires

Zeus and the other children of Cronus released Briareos, Kottos and Gyges from darkness inside the earth and brought them into the light. Zeus reminded them that they had escaped cruel bondage through his plans. He asked them to join his fight against Cronus and the Titans. They accepted his appeal, and the battle turned in Zeus's favour.

The war lasted ten years. The Titans held Mount Othrys, while Zeus and his allies fought from Olympus. The Cyclopes forged Zeus's thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident and Hades's helmet of darkness. The Hecatoncheires hurled rocks as large as mountains at the Titan stronghold, sometimes casting one hundred at a time. In the final assault, they threw three hundred boulders. Zeus answered with screaming thunderbolts, and the battle shook creation to its core. With the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes, Zeus and his brothers and sisters defeated Cronus and the Titans.

After the war, many of the defeated Titans were confined in Tartarus. In one telling, Briareos, Kottos and Gyges became the trusted guards of Zeus at its gates. In another, Kottos and Gyges lived in houses upon the foundations of Oceanus.

Hera, Poseidon, and Pallas Athene begin binding Zeus. The three Olympians act together against him, but their attempt is still in progress when Thetis intervenes. She summons Briareus, the terrifying giant with a hundred arms whom the gods call Aegaeon. She brings him to Zeus and installs him as a guard. Briareus stands between Zeus and the conspirators. His arrival confronts those preparing to bind the god, and Hera, Poseidon, and Athene abandon their plan. Zeus remains unbound, and the coup fails without a contest being described between Briareus and the three gods. The Iliad presents Thetis as a warlike goddess in this defence of Zeus. The same goddess appears in other episodes connected with divine conflict. Her wedding was the occasion to which Eris was not invited. This led to the Judgement of Paris and then to the Trojan War. During that war, Thetis advised Achilles. She warned him not to be the first to disembark from the ships at Troy, since the first to land would be the first to die. She also answered Achilles when he called on her during his dispute with Agamemnon over Briseis. In another account, Thetis rescued Hephaistos after he had been cast from heaven. There are two versions of this event. One says that Zeus threw him down when he came to Hera’s aid. Another says that Hera cast him away because she was ashamed of his lameness. In the latter version, Thetis and Eurynome, daughter of Oceanos, took him to the cave of the Nereids beneath the sea.