1 The Titans in Hesiod

In HesiodThis article discusses the Greek poet. Alternative article: Hesiod (computer system . Hesiod Hesiodos was an early Greek poet, believed to have lived around the year 700 BC. From the 5th century BC literary historians have debated the priority of Hesiod o's TheogonyTheogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek Mythology. For links to texts and translations see Hesiod. Hesiod's Theogony is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as the twelve Titans follow the

Hundred-handers and Cyclopes as children of Ouranos, heaven, and Gaia, the Earth:

"afterwards she lay with Heaven and bore deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and

Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and

gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily,

youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire."

Ouranos considers his offspring monstrous, and so imprisons them in the bowels of the Earth. But Kronos, encouraged by Gaia and aided by the

Hundred-handers and Cyclopes, sets upon his father,

castrates him, and sets himself up as king of the gods, with Rhea as his wife and queen.

Rhea bears a new generation of gods to Cronus, but in fear that they will overthrow him, he swallows them all one by one. Only Zeus is saved: Rhea gives Kronos a stone in swaddling clothes in his place, and places him in Crete to be guarded by the Kouretes.

Once Zeus reaches adulthood, he subdues Kronos by force, and cuts open his father's belly to free his siblings. A war between the younger and older gods commences, in which Zeus is aided by the Hundred-handers,

Gigantes, and Cyclopes, who have once again been freed from Tartarus. Zeus wins after a long struggle, and casts the Titans down

into Tartarus.

And yet the older gods leave their mark on the world. Some of them - like

Mnemosyne and Metis - had not fought the Olympians, and become key players in the new administration. The Titans also leave behind a number of offspring, some of whom may also be counted as Titans, most notably the sons of Iapetus - Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius.

Many ancient ancient sources follow Hesiod closely, with minor variations: Apollodorus adds Dione as a thirteenth Titan.

2 The Titans in Other Greek Sources

Hesiod is not, however, the last word on the Titans. Surviving fragments of Orphic poetry in particular preserve some variations on the myth.

In one Orphic text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently. Instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Kronos, so that he becomes drunk upon honey. Zeus chains him and castrates him. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Kronos is dragged – still drunk – to the cave of Night, where he continues to dream and prophesy throughout eternity.

Another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around

Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the

throne for themselves; they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then dismember him and boil and roast his limbs. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt; Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll, out of which a new Dionysus is made. This story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus " Zagreus", and also in a number of Orphic texts, which do not.

One iteration of this story, reported by the Neoplatonist philosopher Olympiodorus, writing in the Christian era, says that humanity sprung up out of the fatty smoke of the burning Titan corpses. Other earlier writers imply that humanity was born out of the blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus.

Pindar, Plato and Oppian refer offhandedly to man's "Titanic

nature". Whether or not this refers to a sort of "original sin" rooted in the murder of Dionysus is hotly debated by scholars.

3 The Titans in the Twentieth Century

Some scholars of the past century or so, most eloquently Jane Ellen Harrison, have argued that an initiatory or shamanic ritual underlies the myth of Dionysus's dismemberment and cannibalism by the Titans.

Out of confusion with the Gigantes, various large things have been named after the Titans, for example the RMS Titanic.

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