Hekatonkheires

Etching by Tommaso Piroli after a drawing of John Flaxman.
The Hecatonchir Briareos used as an allegory of the multiple threat of labour unrest to Capital in a political cartoon, 1890.

The Hekatoncheires or Hecatonchires (stress on the third syllable;[1][2] singular: Hekatoncheir or Hecatonchir /ˈhɛkəˌtɒŋkər/; Greek: Ἑκατόγχειρες, Hundred-Handed Ones), also called the Centimanes /ˈsɛntˌmnz/ (Latin: Centimani) or Hundred-handers, were figures in an archaic stage of Greek mythology, three giants of incredible strength and ferocity that surpassed all of the Titans, whom they helped overthrow. Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν (hekaton; "hundred") and χείρ (cheir; "hand"), "each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads" (Bibliotheca 1.1). Hesiod's Theogony (624, 639, 714, 734–35) reports that the three Hekatoncheires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus. The Hundred-Handed-Ones are "giants" of great storms and hurricanes.

In Virgil's Aeneid (10.566–67), in which Aeneas is likened to one of them (Briareos, known here as Aegaeon), they 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.

Other accounts make Briareos (or Aegaeon) one of the assailants of Olympus. After his defeat, he was buried under Mount Aetna (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 141).

Mythology

Hesiod

According to Hesiod, the Hekatoncheires were children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (sky).[3][4] They played no known part in cult.[5] They were:

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, Uranus saw how ugly the Hekatoncheires were at their birth and pushed them back into Gaia's womb, upsetting Gaia greatly, causing her great pain and setting in motion the overthrow of Uranus by Cronus, who continued their imprisonment in Tartarus.

The Hekatoncheires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Rhea that they would serve as good allies against Cronus and the Titans. During the War of the Titans, the Hekatoncheires fought against the Titans, throwing rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, and overwhelming them. After this, the Hekatoncheires became the guards of Tartarus. Briareos became the son-in-law of Poseidon, who gave him "Kymopoliea his daughter to wed."[10]

Pausanias

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias, Briareos 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.[11]

Others

Scholia (manuscript notes) on Apollonius of Rhodes represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontos, the Sea, ruling the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships.[12] In Ovid's Metamorphoses and in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana he is a marine deity.[13]

In popular culture

See also

Notes

  1. Howatson, M.C. (2013). "Hecatoncheiʹres". The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 277.
  2. Bulfinch, Thomas (1902). "Hec-atonchiʹres". The Classic Myths in English Literature. Ginn & Co. p. 508.
  3. Hesiod calls them the "Ouranids" (Theogony 502).
  4. A scholia on Apollonius Rhodius 1.1165c notes "Eumelos in the Titanomachy says that Aegaeon 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.
  5. Kerenyi 1951:19
  6. Liddell, Scott & Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, sv.Βριάρεως & βριαρός
  7. See Virgil, Aeneid 6.287: "et centumgeminus Briareus ac belua Lernae"
  8. Liddell, Scott & Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon, sv. κόσσος
  9. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Ancient Greek, sv.γύης
  10. Hesiod, Theogony 817.
  11. Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.1.6 and 2.4.7
  12. Apollonius, Argonautica 1,1165
  13. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.10; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 4.6
  14. Rabelais, Francois (1955). "5". Gargantua and Pantagruel. Great Britain: Penguin Classics. p. 50. ISBN 014044047X.
  15. Dante, Inferno XXXI.99
  16. Dante, Puragtorio XII.28
  17. Ethan FleischerMonday, September 02, 2013 (2013-09-02). "An Even-Handed Tale : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering". Wizards.com. Retrieved 2016-04-04.

References

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Briareus.
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