Hekatoncheiren

The titans collapse under the boulders hurled by the Hekatoncheiren ( The Fall of the Titans by Peter Paul Rubens , 1637–1638, Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts , Brussels )

The Hekatoncheiren ( Greek  ἑκατόγχειρες hekatoncheires "hundred armed", from ἑκατόν hekaton "hundred" and χείρ cheir "hand"; Latin Centimani ) are characters from Greek mythology , three gigantic sons of Uranus and Gaia . Each of them has 50 heads and 100 hands. Their names are Briareos ( Βριάρεως ; also Obriareos ), Gyges ( Γύγης ; also Gyes ) and Kottos ( Κόττος ). The main source for the myth is the theogony of Hesiod . The name Hekatoncheiren appears relatively late in the library of Apollodorus and Hyginus Mythographus .

Her father Uranos hated the Hekatoncheiren from the beginning and hid them immediately after their birth in a dark place in the earth, where the sunlight never penetrated. Her mother suffered from the unjust fate of the children and donated her other children from the titanium sex at her father with a sickle from Adamant to castrate , among the Titans but was Kronos ready for this fact.

The Hekatoncheirs were only freed from their underground prison at the edge of the world by Zeus , the son of Kronos. Zeus and his siblings fought an indefinite war against the other titans for 10 years (see Titanomachy ). But Gaia had prophesied that with the help of the Hekatoncheirs Zeus could achieve victory. Zeus freed the Hekatoncheiren from the Erebos , gave them nectar to drink and ragweed to eat, whereby after the long imprisonment they brought their enormous powers to full development again and went into the fight against the opponents of Zeus strengthened. The titans collapsed under the attack of the hundred-armed men: Briareos, Gyges and Kottos piled 300 rocks on top of each other and buried the titans underneath. The vanquished were tied up and banished to the Tartaros, but the Hekatoncheirs were appointed to their guards. Briareos also received the hand of his daughter Kymopolea from Poseidon , who gave birth to the nymph Oiolyke .

Briareos is also identified with Aigaion ( Αἰγαίων ), as in Virgil and in the fasts of Ovid . In Homer , Aigaion appears as the father of Briareos, who is only so called by the gods, but people call him Aigaion because he is superior to the father in strength. He was so powerful that even gods shied away from confronting him: When Hera , Poseidon and Athena had conspired to overpower and bind Zeus , Thetis called Briareos to Mount Olympus, who sat next to Zeus:

This now sat with Kronion the thunderer, joyful defiance.

The gods were terrified, and were afraid to tie them up.

literature

• Julius Adolf Bernhard : Aigaion . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 140-143 ( digitized version ).
• Julius Adolf Bernhard: Briareos (1) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 818 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Maximilian Mayer : The giants and titans in ancient sagas and art. Weidmann, Berlin 1887, pp. 120ff
• Erika Simon :  Hekatoncheires . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume IV, Zurich / Munich 1988, pp. 481-482.

Web links

Commons : Hekatoncheiren  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hekatonkheires in Theoi Project (engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Apollodor Libraries 1, 1, 7 and Hyginus Mythographus, astronomica Praefatio.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hesiod, Theogony 147 ff.
3. ↑ Hesiod, Theogonie 807 ff. And Stesichoros Fragment 299 (Scholion zu Apollonios von Rhodos , Argonautika )
4. ^ Virgil, Aeneis 10, 565 [1]
5. ↑ Ovid, Fasti 3, 793 ff.
6. ↑ Homer, Iliad 1, 395-406