Gigantomachy

The Gigantomachy was the war between the Olympian gods and the Giants, the huge sons of Earth, fought on the plain of Phlegra. In Apollodorus’ account, the fullest that survives, the gods could not win it alone and had to take a mortal, Heracles, as their ally. It should not be confused with the earlier Titanomachy, the war against the Titans.

The Giants

Apollodorus says that Earth (Gaea), angry about the Titans whom Zeus had imprisoned in Tartarus, bore the Giants to Uranus. They were matchless in the size of their bodies and invincible in strength, terrible to look at, with long hair hanging from their heads and chins, and with the scales of dragons for feet; they were born at Phlegrae, or according to others at Pallene, and hurled rocks and burning oaks at the sky (Library 1.6.1). Hesiod gives a different birth: the Giants sprang from Earth when she was fertilised by the blood of Uranus after Cronus castrated him (Theogony 183–186). Pindar already knew the story: in his first Nemean ode Teiresias foretells that when the gods meet the Giants on the plain of Phlegra, the Giants’ hair will be stained with dirt beneath the arrows of Heracles (Nemean 1.67–69).

The Prophecy and Gaea’s Plant

The war began when the Giant Alcyoneus drove off the cattle of Helios from the island of Erytheia. Alcyoneus was immortal as long as he fought on the land where he was born. The gods learned from an oracle that none of the Giants could be killed by the hand of a god, but that they could be destroyed with the help of a mortal. Earth, learning of this, went looking for a drug that would keep the Giants from being killed even by a mortal. Zeus was ahead of her. He forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine, cut the plant himself in the darkness, and through Athena summoned Heracles to fight on the side of the gods (Library 1.6.1).

The Battle

Apollodorus lists the fighters and the way each Giant died (Library 1.6.1–2).

Alcyoneus: Heracles shot him, but he could not die while he fought on his native land. On Athena’s advice Heracles dragged him outside Pallene, and there he perished.
Porphyrion: he attacked Heracles and Hera; Zeus inspired in him a desire for Hera, and as he tore her robes she called for help, Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt and Heracles finished him with an arrow. (Pindar, Pythian 8.12–18, has Apollo shoot the king of the Giants.)
Ephialtes: Apollo shot him in the left eye and Heracles in the right.
Eurytus: killed by Dionysus with his thyrsus.
Clytius: killed by Hecate with her torches.
Mimas: killed by Hephaestus with missiles of red-hot metal.
Enceladus: he fled, and Athena threw the island of Sicily on top of him.
Pallas: Athena flayed him and used his skin to protect her own body in the fight.
Polybotes: Poseidon pursued him across the sea and broke off a piece of the island of Cos, called Nisyrus, and threw it on him.
Hippolytus: killed by Hermes, who wore the helmet of Hades.
Gration: killed by Artemis.
Agrius and Thoas: killed by the Fates (Moirai) with bronze clubs.
The rest Zeus struck down with thunderbolts, and Heracles shot them all with arrows as they died.

Heracles’ arrows are central to the story. The gods could strike the Giants down, but the prophecy meant that a mortal had to be present for each of them to die, and so Zeus, Athena and the other gods are shown wounding or pinning a Giant while Heracles, standing beside them, delivers the last blow. This is why Heracles appears in so many of the entries above, and why Zeus took such care to secure him before the fighting began.

Giants Beneath Islands

In this account two of the Giants end up buried under islands: Enceladus under Sicily, and Polybotes under the fragment of land that became Nisyros. Later poets made the buried Giant the cause of the island’s fires: Virgil says that Enceladus, scorched by the thunderbolt, lies pinned under Mount Etna, whose flames are his breath and whose tremors come when he turns over (Aeneid 3.578–582). Pindar had told the same story of the monster Typhon under Etna (Pythian 1.15–28), and the two were often confused. Other Giants were killed outright, by weapons, fire or the club of the Fates.

Diodorus Siculus, who treats the myths as history, places the Giants in several lands: Heracles fought beside the gods against the Giants of Pallene and so earned the title Olympian, which Zeus gave only to the gods who had fought at his side (4.15.1); on his way back from Spain Heracles destroyed the lawless Giants of the Phlegraean plain near Cumae in Italy, named “fiery” from the volcano later called Vesuvius (4.21.5–7); and in the Cretan account Zeus himself fought Giants in Crete, at Pallene in Macedonia and on the Phlegraean plain, punishing them because they had enslaved their neighbours and made war on the gods (5.71.2–6).

The Battle in Art

The Gigantomachy was a favourite subject of Greek temple sculpture. Euripides describes it on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, with Athena bearing her Gorgon shield against Enceladus, Zeus burning Mimas with his thunderbolt and Dionysus killing another Giant with his ivy staff (Ion 206–218), and Plato has Socrates mention the wars and battles of the gods shown by artists in the sanctuaries and on the robe carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea (Euthyphro 6b–c); the Giants’ battle was the subject woven on that robe.

See Also: Gigantes, Zeus, Athena, Helios, Gaea, Uranus, Heracles, Alcyoneus, Porphyrion, Enceladus, Polybotes, Mimas, Typhoeus, Titans