Mimas

Mimas, a Giant born from Gaia, joined the Gigantomachy, the war between the Giants and the Olympian gods. The battle was fought on the plain of Phlegra, where the Giants attacked the gods. They hurled boulders and burning trees at the Olympians. The conflict formed another struggle for control of the cosmos after the earlier war between the Olympians and the Titans.

Mimas fought among the marauding Giants. The Olympian gods answered the attack with their own weapons. In one account, Zeus used a mighty thunderbolt, blazing at both ends, against Mimas. Another account gives the deed to Hephaestus. Hephaestus scalded Mimas with a ladle of red-hot metal, or destroyed him by hurling missiles of glowing iron at him.

The account of the Gigantomachy preserved by Apollodorus names Hephaestus as Mimas’s killer. It lists his death alongside the deaths of other Giants: Dionysus killed Eurytos with his thyrsos, Hecate killed Clytios with her torches, Apollo and Heracles killed Ephialtes, and Athena crushed Encelados beneath Sicily. A different tradition says that Zeus burned Mimas to death with his thunderbolts. The supplied account also records Ares as a possible slayer. Thus Mimas’s battle ends with his destruction during the Giants’ defeat, but the identity of the god who killed him varies between sources.