Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans (Greek: Τιτάν, Titán, plural: Τiτᾶνες,

Titânes) and Titanesses (or Titanides; Greek: Τιτανίς, Titanís,
plural: Τιτανίδες, Titanídes) were members of the second
generation of divine beings, descending from the primordial
deities and preceding the Olympians. Based on Mount Othrys, the
Titans most famously included the first twelve children of Gaia
(Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky). They ruled during the
legendary Golden Age, and also comprised the first pantheon of
Greek deities.

The first twelve Titans were the females Mnemosyne, Tethys,

Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis and the males Oceanus,
Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, and Iapetus.

They begat more Titans: Hyperion's children Helios, Selene, and

Eos; Coeus' children Leto and Asteria; Iapetus' sons Atlas,
Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius; Oceanus' daughter
Metis; and Crius' sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.

Just as Cronus overthrew his father Uranus, the Titans were

overthrown by Cronus's children (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia,
Hera and Demeter), in the Titanomachy (or "War of the Titans").
The Greeks may have borrowed this mytheme from the Ancient
Near East.[1]

Titanomachy
Greeks of the classical age knew several poems about the war
between the Olympians and Titans. The dominant one, and the
only one that has survived, was in the Theogony attributed to
Hesiod. A lost epic, Titanomachia (attributed to the legendary
blind Thracian bard Thamyris) was mentioned in passing in an
essay On Music that was once attributed to Plutarch. The Titans
also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus.
Although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show
interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition.

The classical Greek myths of the Titanomachy fall into a class of

similar myths throughout Europe and the Near East concerning a
war in heaven, where one generation or group of gods largely
opposes the dominant one. Sometimes the elders are supplanted,
and sometimes the rebels lose and are either cast out of power
entirely or incorporated into the pantheon. Other examples might
include the wars of the Æsir with the Vanir in Scandinavian
mythology, the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish, the Hittite "Kingship
in Heaven" narrative, the obscure generational conflict in Ugaritic
fragments, Virabhadra's conquest of the early Vedic Gods, and the
rebellion of Lucifer in Christianity. The Titanomachy lasted for ten
years.[2] The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus after the war had
ended. Tartarus is said to be the deepest part of the Underworld
and the place where the evilest beings are tortured for all eternity.

Genealogy
 Titan Fam

Uranus

Oceanus Tethys Hyperion T

The Rivers The Oceanids Helios Selene [4]

Cronus Rhea

Hestia Hera Poseidon Zeus

Demeter Hades Apollo

Iapetus Clymene (or Asia) [5]

Atlas [6] Menoetius Prometheus [7] Epimetheus

Orphic sources
Rhea, a Titan daughter of the earth goddess Gaia, was both sister and wife to
Kronos.

Hesiod does not have the last word on the Titans. Surviving
fragments of poetry ascribed to Orpheus preserve some
variations on the myth. In such text, Zeus does not simply set
upon his father violently. Instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for
Cronus so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather
than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged – still drunk
– to the cave of Nyx (Night), where he continues to dream
throughout eternity.

Another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves

around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give
up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant
Zeus, is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the
child and claim the throne for themselves; they paint their faces
white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then dismember
him and boil and roast his limbs. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans
with his thunderbolt; Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll,
out of which a new Dionysus is made. This story is told by the
poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus "Zagreus",
and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not.

One iteration of this story, of the Late Antique Neoplatonist

philosopher Olympiodorus, recounted in his commentary of Plato's
Phaedo,[8] affirms that humanity sprang up out of the fatty smoke
of the burning Titan corpses. Pindar, Plato, and Oppian refer
offhandedly to the "Titanic nature" of humans. According to them,
the body is the titanic part, while soul is the divine part of humans.
Other early writers imply that humanity was born out of the
malevolent blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus.
Some scholars consider that Olympiodorus' report, the only
surviving explicit expression of this mythic connection, embodied
a tradition that dated to the Bronze Age, while Radcliffe Edmonds
has suggested an element of innovative allegorized improvisation
to suit Olympiodorus' purpose.[9]

Modern interpretations

Cronus armed with sickle; after a carved gem (Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison,
Galerie mythologique, 1811).
Some 19th- and 20th-century scholars, including Jane Ellen
Harrison, have argued that an initiatory or shamanic ritual
underlies the myth of the dismemberment and cannibalism of
Dionysus by the Titans.[10] She also asserts that the word "Titan"
comes from the Greek τίτανος, signifying white "earth, clay, or
gypsum," and that the Titans were "white clay men", or men
covered by white clay or gypsum dust in their rituals.[11] Martin
Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic
initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices.[12]

Beekes connects the word with τιτώ (a now-obscure word for

"day").[13] Other scholars connect the word to the Greek verb
τείνω ("teino", to stretch), through an epic variation τιταίνω and
τίσις (titaino and tisis, "retribution" and "vengeance"). Hesiod
appears to share that view when he narrates:

But their father, great Ouranos, called them Titans

by surname, rebuking his sons, whom he had
begotten himself; for he said they had "strained"
(τιταίνοντας, titainontas) in their wickedness to
perform a mighty deed, and at some later time there
would be "vengeance" (τίσιν, tisin) for this.

— Hesiod, Theogony, 207–210.

Robert Graves suggested that Titans means 'lords'.[14]

In astronomy
The planet Saturn is named for the Roman equivalent of the Titan
Cronus. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is named after the Titans
generally, and the other moons of Saturn are named after
individual titans, specifically Tethys, Phoebe, Rhea, Hyperion, and
Iapetus. Astronomer William Henry Pickering claimed to discover
another moon of Saturn which he named Themis, but this
discovery was never confirmed, and the name Themis was given
to an asteroid, 24 Themis. Asteroid 57 Mnemosyne was also
named for a titan.

A proto-planet Theia is hypothesized to have been involved in a

collision in the early solar system, forming the Earth's moon.

In popular culture

Notes
1. Burkert, pp. 94f, 125–27 .
2. About.com's Ancient/Classical History section ; Hesiod,
Theogony, 617–643: "So they, with bitter wrath, were fighting
continually with one another at that time for ten full years, and the
hard strife had no close or end for either side..."
3. Hesiod, Theogony 132–138 , 337–411 , 453–520 , 901–906,
915–920 ; Caldwell, pp. 8–11, tables 11–14.
4. Although usually the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, as in
Hesiod, Theogony 371–374 , in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (4),
99–100 , Selene is instead made the daughter of Pallas the son of
Megamedes.
5. According to Hesiod, Theogony 507–511 , Clymene, one of the
Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, at Hesiod,
Theogony 351 , was the mother by Iapetus of Atlas, Menoetius,
Prometheus, and Epimetheus, while according to Apollodorus,
1.2.3 , another Oceanid, Asia was their mother by Iapetus.
6. According to Plato, Critias, 113d–114a , Atlas was the son of
Poseidon and the mortal Cleito.
7. In Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 18, 211, 873 (Sommerstein, pp.
444–445 n. 2 , 446–447 n. 24 , 538–539 n. 113 ) Prometheus is
made to be the son of Themis.
8. Olympiodorus, In Plat. Phaedr. I.3–6.
9. West; Albert Bernabé, "La toile de Pénélope: a-t-il existé un mythe
orphique sur Dionysos et les Titans?", Revue de l'histoire des
religions (2002:401–33), noted by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, "A
Curious concoction: tradition and innovation in Olympiodorus'
creation of mankind" .
10. Harrison, Jane Ellen (1908). Proleoromena to the Study of
Greek Religion (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 490.
11. Harrison, Jane Ellen (1908). Proleoromena to the Study of
Greek Religion (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 491ff.
12. West.
13. Beekes 2010 Etymological Dictionary of Greek, sv. τιτώ
14. Robert Graves. The Greek Myths, section 1 s.v. The Pelasgian
Creation Myth

References
Burket, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern
Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age , Harvard
University Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-674-64364-2.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of
Greek Religion , 1913.
Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an
English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge,
Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William
Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital
Library .
Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology, 1870, Ancientlibrary.com , article on "Titan"
West, Martin Litchfield, The Orphic Poems, Clarendon Press,
1983. ISBN 978-0-19-814854-8.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Titans.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Theogony of Hesiod

Theoi Project, Titans references to Titans in classical literature,

in translation
Greek Mythology Link, Titans summary of the Titans myth

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