Hecatonchires

Information about Hecatonchires

The Hecatonchires, or Hekatonkheires, were three gargantuan figures of an archaic stage of Greek mythology. According to Hesiod they were children of Gaia and Uranus,[1] simply the issue of Earth and Sky, or of Earth and Sea[2] thus part of the very beginning of things (Kerenyi 1951:19) in the submerged prehistory of Greek myth, though they played no part in cult. They were known as Briareus the Vigorous, also called Aigaion (Latinized as Aegaeon) the "sea goat", Cottus the Striker or the Furious, and Gyges (or Gyes) the Big-Limbed. Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν (hekaton; "hundred") and χείρ (kheir; "hand"), "each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads" (Bibliotheca). They were giants of incredible strength and ferocity, even superior to that of the Titans, whom they helped overthrow, and the Cyclopes. In Latin poetry, the Hecatonchires were known as the Centimani, which simply translates "Hundred-Handed Ones."

It would be difficult to determine exactly what natural phenomena are symbolized by the Hecatoncheires. They may represent the gigantic forces of nature which appear in earthquakes and other convulsions, or the multitudinous motion of the sea waves (Mayer, Die Giganten und Titanen, 1887).

Soon after they were born, their father, Uranus, threw them into the depths of Tartarus because he saw them as hideous monsters. In some versions of this myth, Uranus saw how ugly the Hecatonchires were at their birth and pushed them back into Gaia's womb, upsetting Gaia greatly, causing her great pain, and setting into motion the overthrow of Uranus by Cronus. In this version of the myth, they were only later imprisoned in Tartarus by Cronus.

The Hecatonchires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Gaia that they would serve as good allies against Cronus. During the War of the Titans, the Hecatonchires threw rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, at the Titans, overwhelming them. Hesiod, in continuing the Theogony (624, 639, 714, 734-35) reports the three Hecatonchires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus. Other accounts make Briareus one of the assailants of Olympus, who, after his defeat, was buried under Mount Aetna (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 141).

Briareos as the "sea-goat" Aigaion

The sea-goat Aigaion "cannot be distinguished from Hesiod's Briareos", according to M.L. West; they are already explicitly linked in Iliad I.402-04, though they must have had separate origins:[3]
...the monster of the hundred arms whom the gods call Briareus, but mankind Aegaeon, a giant more powerful even than his father."[4]


This episode, alluded to in Iliad (i.399ff), is found nowhere else in Greek mythology: at one time the Olympian gods were trying to overthrow Zeus but were stopped when the sea nymph Thetis brought one of the Hecatonchires to his aid, him whom the gods call Briareios but men call Aigaion ("goatish" Iliad i.403).[5] Hesiod reconciles the archaic Hecatonchires with the Olympian pantheon by making of Briareos the son-in-law of Poseidon, he "giving him Kymopoliea his daughter to wed." (Theogony 817).

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias (Description of Greece ii. 1.6 and 4.7), Briareus was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between sea and sun: he adjudged the Isthmus of Corinth to belong to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) sacred to Helios.

In Virgil's Aeneid (10.566-67), Aeneas is likened in a simile to "Aegaeon," though in Virgil's account Aegaeon fought on the side of the Titans rather than the Olympians; in this Virgil was following the lost Corinthian epic Titanomachy rather than the more familiar account in Hesiod.

Adaptations

Briareus is mentioned in the Divine Comedy as one of the Titans who attacked Jove on Olympus. He is in the pit of the giants in the ninth circle of hell (Inferno XXXI.99). The giant is also mentioned in Cervantes´ Don Quixote, in the famous episody of the windmills.

As somewhat generic fearful challenges, the Hecatoncheires are listed in the Epic Level Handbook (a Dungeons & Dragons rulebook) as being the most powerful "monsters" available, with a Challenge Rating of 57. For comparison, the Tarrasque (a D&D monster normally at the top level) has a CR of 20. The CR of this monster has been debated, as have those of many of the other epic monsters in the book. Since the system was developed separately from Deities and Demigods, the monster isn't a challenge for most gods at all, who vastly outstrip it in power (which is the reverse of the mythical description of the Hecatoncheires).

More distantly, Briareos Hecatonchires is one of the protagonists of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed. He is a cyborg with a device called the Hecatonchires controller, which allows him to control dozens of limbs or even other bodies without straining himself.

In the Hyperion Cantos, Briareus and Gyges are the names given to two of the constructs used to hunt Aenea by the Technocore.

In the up and coming Xbox 360 game , there are three types of aerial battle fortresses, the largest one named the 'Aigaion', and the other two types being labelled as the 'Kottos' and the 'Gyges'.

Notes

1. ^ Hesiod calls them the "Ouranids" (Theogony 502).
2. ^ A scholia on Apollonius Rhodius 1.1165c notes "Eumelos in the Titanomachy says that Aigaion was the son of Earth and Sea, lived in the sea, and fought on the side of the Titans"; noted in M.L. West "'Eumelos': A Corinthian Epic Cycle?" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 122 (2002, pp. 109-133) p 111.
3. ^ West 2002:111.
4. ^ Homer: The Iliad, E.V. Rieu, translator.
5. ^ "At one time he must have shared with the goddess dominion over the depths of the Aegean Sea". (Kerenyi 1951:24). Achilles is speaking to Thetis, his mother, recalling the archaic myth that is attested only here in the Iliad. Briareus/Aigaion belongs to this deep-buried mythic level: "He squatted by the Son of Cronos with such a show of force that the blessed gods slunk off in terror, leaving Zeus free."

Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes (i. 1165) represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontus, the Sea, ruling the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships. He is a marine deity in Ovid (Metamorphoses (ii. 10) and in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana (iv. 6) (Theoi.com).

References

See also

Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices.
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Hesiod (Greek: Ἡσίοδος Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BC.
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For other uses, see Gaia.


Gaia (pronounced /'geɪ.ə/ or /'gaɪ.
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Uranus (IPA: /ˈjʊərənəs, jʊˈreɪnəs/) is the Latinized form of Ouranos (Οὐρανός
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cult of a religion, quite apart from its sacred writings ("scriptures"), its theology or myths, or the personal faith of its believers, is the totality of external religious practice and observance, the neglect of which is the definition of impiety.
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Ancient Greek refers to the second stage in the history of the Greek language[1] as it existed during the Archaic (9th–6th centuries BC) and Classical (5th–4th centuries BC) periods in Greece.
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Titans (Greek: Τιτάν Titan; plural: Τιτάνες Titanes
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Cyclops (pronounced IPA: /ˈsaɪklɒps/), or Kyklops (Greek Κύκλωψ
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Latin}}} 
Official status
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Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
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Tartarus, or Tartaros (Greek Τάρταρος, deep place). It is either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades or the entire underworld with Hades being the hellish
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Cronus (Ancient Greek Κρόνος, Krónos), also called Cronos or Kronos, was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky.
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Campe or Kampe ("crooked") was set by Cronus to guard the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus after Cronus imprisoned them there; she was killed by Zeus when he rescued the Cyclopes for help in the battle with the Titans (Bibliotheke 1.2.1).
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Zeus (in Greek: nominative: Ζεύς Zeús, genitive: Διός Diós
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Titanomachy, or War of the Titans (Greek: Τιτανομαχία), was the eleven-year series of battles fought between the two races of deities long before the existence of mankind: the Titans,
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Martin Litchfield West (born 23 September 1937, London, England) is an internationally recognised scholar in classics, classical antiquity and philology. In 2002, upon his receipt of the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies from the British Academy, he was called "the most brilliant
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iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display.

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Main specifications:
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Thetis (ancient Greek Θέτις) is a sea nymph, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of "the ancient one of the seas," Nereus, and Doris (Hesiod, Theogony), a grand-daughter of Tethys.
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This article is about the Greek god.

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Pausanias (Greek: Παυσανίας) was a Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.
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HeliOS was a Unix-like operating system for parallel computers developed and sold by Perihelion Software. It was most commonly used on various Transputer systems, but also supported other architectures.
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isthmus of Corinth is the narrow landbridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth. The word "isthmus" comes from the Ancient Greek word for "neck" and refers to the narrowness of the land.
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Acrocorinth (Greek: Ακροκόρινθος), the acropolis of Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece.
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Aeneid (IPA English pronunciation: [əˈniːɪd]; in Latin Aeneis, pronounced [aɪˈne.
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The Titanomachy is a lost epic poem, which is a part of Greek mythology. It deals with the struggle that Zeus and his siblings, the Olympic gods, had in overthrowing their father Cronus and his
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The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian
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El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha

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Author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Original title El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha
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The Epic Level Handbook is a rulebook by Wizards of the Coast containing rules for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition characters to attain levels above 20, the limit in the core rulebooks.
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Monster is a term for any number of legendary creatures that usually appear in mythology, legend, and horror fiction. The word originates from the ancient Latin , meaning "omen", from the root of , "to warn", and also meaning "prodigy" or "miracle".
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