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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', the "sea goat", 'Cottus' the Striker or the Furious, and 'Gyges' (or 'Gyes') the Big-Limbed. Their name derives from the Greek (''hekaton''; "hundred") and (''kheir''; "hand"), and means "Hundred-Handed", "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. Another version of the legend seems to say that Gaia wanted Cronus to free the Hecatonchires, but that he didn't, which possibly made them bitter at the Titans.
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).

Contents

Briareos as the "sea-goat" Aigaion

Adaptations

Notes

References

See also

Briareos as the "sea-goat" Aigaion

The sea-goat ''Aigaion'' "cannot be distinguished from Hesiod's Briareos"; they are already explicitly linked in ''Iliad'' I.402-04, though they must have had separate origins^[3] 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.
In the ''Iliad'' (i.399) there is a story, found nowhere else in mythology, that 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).^[4] 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.

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 legendary monster normally at the top of the D&D food chain, has a CR of 20.
The CR of this monster has been debated, as has many of the other epic monsters in the book. Since the system was developed separatly from Deities and Demigods, the monster isn't a challenge for most gods at all, who wastly outstrips it in power (Which is the reverse of the description of the Hecatoncheires).
More distantly, Briareos Hecatonchires is one of the protagonists of Masamune Shirow's ''Appleseed''. He is a cyborg with a Hecatonchires controller. This system allows him control over 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.

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. "At one time he must have shared with the goddess dominion over the depths of the Aegean Sea". (Kerenyi 1951: 24). 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

★ Hesiod's Theogony, 147ff.

★ ''Bibliotheca'' I.1.1

★ Ovid, ''Fasti'' iv.593

★ Horace ''Carminae'' II.17.14, III.4.69

★ Karl Kerenyi, ''Gods of the Greeks'' (London: Thames and Hudson) 1951.

★ Theoi.com:Briareus

See also

★ Greek Mythology