"afterwards she lay with Heaven and bore deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire."

The Titans, also known as the elder gods, were the children of Gaia and Uranus ruled the earth before the Olympians overthrew them. The ruler of the Titans was Cronus who was de-throned by his son Zeus. Most of the Titans fought with Cronus against Zeus and were punished by being banished to Tartarus. During their rule the Titans were associated with the various planets.

The Titans are: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Cronus, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys, Dione and Ophion.

As time went on more Titans were born from the original ones. Together the ruled over the world, the heavens and the afterlife. Some of the offspring of the twelve are also counted as Titans, most notably the sons of Iapetus, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius. Their reign came to an end when Zeus killed their father, the Titan Cronus, and then won a war over the Titans with the help of his brothers and sisters.

History

The first children of Uranus and Gaia were the three Hecatonchires, who each had fifty heads and a hundred hands, and the three Cyclopes, who each had a single eye. After these came the twelve Titans. However, Uranus considered his early offspring monstrous, and imprisoned the Hecantochires and the Cyclopes. Furious, Gaia made overtures to the Titans to overthrow Uranus, to which only Cronus, the youngest would listen. He lay in wait for his father with a sickle, and castrating him, took his place as ruler of the universe. Cronus had the help of the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes, since he freed them from their imprisonment in Tartarus. After Uranus was deposed, however, Cronus returned the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes to Tartarus.

From the blood of Uranus, Gaia later brought forth the Gigantes, who were destroyed by the gods with the help of Heracles. His genitals also turned into the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. Cronus took over the crown of the world and the heavens and married his sister Rhea Cronus had the habit of swallowing his own children right after their birth because his mother, Gaia had prophesied that one would eventually depose him as ruler of the universe in the same manner Cronus had taken over, by overthrowing his father. The last child was Zeus, whom Rhea protected by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in a baby’s cloth to swallow.

Rhea hid the infant Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. According to one version of the story, he was then raised by a goat named Amalthea. Koryvandes, a company of soldiers,or smaller gods danced, shouted and clapped their hands to make noise so that Cronus would not hear the baby’s cry. It was sometimes also said that he was nursed by a nymph named Adamanthea. Since Cronus ruled over the earth, the heavens and the sea, she hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth, sea and sky and thus, invisible to his father.

When he grew up, Zeus revolted against his father’s tyranny. He won this war, the Battle of Titans, and set his brothers and sisters free by cutting his father’s stomach open. He also rescued the Hecatonchires, Gigantes and Cyclopes from Tartarus; they helped him overthrow the Titans. The Cyclopes fashioned the lightning bolts Zeus was famous for. He shared the world with his elder brothers, Poseidon and Plouton, or Hades after drawing lots: Zeus got the land, Poseidon the sea and Plouton the world of the shadows, the dead.

THE FIRST TITANS

Oceanus

The ocean, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as a river circling the world. In Greek mythology it was personified as a Titan, son of Uranus and Gaia. He married his sister Tethys, and from them came the ocean nymphs, also known as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world.

Coeus

Coeus was a Titan, husband of Phoebe and father of Leto and Asteria. With the other Titans, he was overthrown by Zeus and the other Olympians.

Crius

Crius was one of the Titans, a son of Uranus and Gaia. He was overthrown in the Titanomachy.
With Eurybia, he was the father of Pallas.

Hyperion

Hyperion ("he who goes before the sun") was a Titan, the son of Gaea and Uranus and the father of Helios, Eos and Selene with Theia. He was the god of the sun before the ascent of Apollo.

Iapetus

Iapetus was a Titan, the son of Uranus, by the nymph Clymene the father of Prometheus, Atlas, Epimetheus, and Menoetius and an ancestor of the human species. His wife was occasionally considered to be Asia or Asopis.

Theia

Daughter to Gea and Uranus, Thia was the goddess of the sun, marrying Hyperion and fighting the olimpic gods with her brothers and sisters to rule the Olympus. As they lost, Zeus trapped all of them in Tartarus (the greek hell), but Thia escaped to earth, where she built an empire and had a lot of lovers and husbands, killing everyone of them as she got pregnant, for her target was to have as many sons as possible to cover important places in politics and economics.

Cronus

Cronus ("crow", also called Cronos and Kronos; not to be confused with Chronos), in Greek mythology, (Saturn in Roman mythology) was the leader and youngest of the Titans. His mother was Gaia and his father was Uranus whom Cronus hated. Uranus hid the youngest children of Gaia, the one-hundred armed giants (Hecatonchires) and the one-eyed giants, the Cyclopes, in Tartarus so that they would not see the light, rejoicing in this evil doing. This caused pain to Gaia (Tartarus was her bowels) so she created grey flint and shaped a great sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to ask them to obey her. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and set him in ambush. Cronus jumped out and lopped off his father’s testicles, casting them behind him. From his blood on the Earth came forth the Gigantes, Erinyes and Meliae. From the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. For this, Uranus called his sons Titans, meaning “strainers” for they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, for which vengeance would come afterwards.

Rhea

Rhea was the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, sister and wife of Cronus and the mother of Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon, and Zeus. She was strongly associated with Cybele.

Themis

Themis ("law") (Roman equivalent: Justitia) was the personification of divine order, law and custom. She built the Oracle at Delphi and was herself oracular. With Zeus, she was the mother of the Horae, Moirae, Dike and Astraea.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne (pronounced: ni-ma-zi-ne in 4 syllables, and not to rhyme with sign) was the personification of memory in Greek mythology; she was the mother of the Muses by Zeus. The word mnemonic is derived from her.

Phoebe

Phoebe is the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, and grandmother of Apollo and Artemis. By Coeus, she mothered Leto and Asteria. She received control of the Oracle at Delphi from Thetis, according to a minority of sources.

Tethys

Tethys was a Titaness and sea goddess who was both sister and wife of Oceanus. Together, they had the three-thousand Oceanids. During the war against the Titans, Tethys raised Rhea, her god-child.

Dione

Dione ("divine queen") was the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. She was a Titan. Her name is actually a feminine form of the same name as Zeus. The name is also used to refer to Aphrodite.

Ophion

Ophion ("serpent") was a rarely-mentioned Titan. With Eurynome, he ruled the world until Cronus deposed him.

Tag: Titans