by Stephen Popple

Created on: March 30, 2008

In Greek mythology the Titans, known as the elder gods, ruled the Earth before the Olympians overthrew them. The Titans of the first generation are the aunts, uncles, and parents of the Olympian gods and goddesses. The titans are the twelve children if Gaia (earth), their mother, and Uranus (sky), their father.

The six male Titans are known as the Titanes and the females as the Titanides (Titanesses). Each son married or had children by, one of his sisters. A they paired up they are Cronus (or Kronos) and rhea, Iapetus and Themis, Oceanus and Tethys, Hyperion and Theia, Crius and Mnemosyne, and Coeus and Pheobe. The titans were associated with various primal concepts, some of which are simply extrapolated from their names, Ocean and fruitful earth, sun and moon, memory and natural law.

In Hesiod's Theogony the twelve Titans follow the Hecatonchires (the Hundred handed) and the three Cyclops as the youngest set of children of Uranus and Gaia. Uranus cast the Hecatonchires and the Cyclops into that part of the underworld known as Tartarus. Following this event their indignant mother Gaia persuaded the titans to rebel against their father. Uranus knowing this, kept all of Gaia's children trapped within her womb and Gaia groaned under the burden. Cronus, who was Gaia's youngest and most dangerous child, volunteered to set upon his father. Cronus emasculated his father Uranus with a flint sickle given to him by his mother Gaia. Thus the Titans were freed and Cronus set himself up as king of the titans.

Cronus and the other eleven Titans then freed their siblings the Hecatonchires and the Cyclops from Tartarus. However they soon fell out and Cronus returned the Hecatonchires and the Cyclops to the underworld.

The children of Cronus and Rhea were the twelve Olympian gods, and it was foretold of Cronus by both Uranus and Gaia that he would be dethroned by his own son. Cronus decided to avoid his fate and swallowed each of his children as they were born. But Zeus escaped his fate and, leading the Olympians, he waged war against the Titans, taking the Hecatonchires and the Cyclops, whom he has freed from Tartarus, as allies. Following this Titanmachy (war of the Titans), the Olympians imprisoned the titans in Tartarus and replaced them as the god of the ancient world.

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