A Compendium of the Ancient Gods
The Hecatoncheires, plate

Greater than the Cyclopes, and more terrible to behold, were the Hecatoncheires — the Hundred-Handed — three brothers each of whom had fifty heads upon his shoulders and a hundred arms growing from his sides. They were Briareus (whom the gods called Aegaeon), Cottus, and Gyges, and they were the eldest sons of Gaia and Uranus, born before the Cyclopes and before the Titans. Their strength was beyond reckoning, and the earth shook when they moved.

Like their brothers the Cyclopes, they were cast down into Tartarus by Uranus, who feared them; and there they lay through the reign of Cronus also. But when at last Zeus had been at war with the Titans for nine years and could not prevail, Gaia counseled him to release the Hundred-Handed, for in their hands lay the victory. So Zeus descended into Tartarus and brought them forth, and gave them ambrosia and nectar to restore their strength; and they in their gratitude took up their place beside the Olympians.

When the final battle came, the three Hundred-Handed stood in the foremost rank, and from their three hundred hands they hurled three hundred boulders at the Titans — a storm of stones that darkened the sky and beat down the elder gods, until at length Cronus and his brothers were overcome and bound. The Hecatoncheires were then appointed by Zeus as the wardens of the Titans in Tartarus; and there they remain to this day, holding the great gates beyond which the elder gods are imprisoned forever.

Briareus alone of the three has any further story. Once when Hera, Poseidon, and Athena conspired to bind Zeus, Thetis the sea-goddess summoned Briareus from the depths, and at his appearance the conspirators released their lord; for none, not even three Olympians together, dared face the Hundred-Handed. Thereafter Briareus dwelt with Poseidon in the sea, and was given the sea-nymph Cymopolea to wife.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

The Hecatoncheires are described in Hesiod's Theogony 147-153, 617-735 (the great Titanomachy passage), and 815-819. The Briareus episode in which Thetis summons him is preserved in Iliad 1.396-406, where Achilles recounts the story to his mother — one of the very few Hesiodic figures who appears in Homer with a substantial narrative. The Pseudo-Apollodoran Bibliotheca (1.1) follows Hesiod closely. The name Hecatoncheires is post-Hesiodic; Hesiod himself simply calls them 'children of Earth and Heaven.' The double name Briareus/Aegaeon is glossed in Iliad 1.403-404 with the famous line that 'the gods call him Briareus, but all men call him Aegaeon' — an instance of the Homeric topos that the gods speak a different language.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Primordial Powers. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1600–1100 BCE
Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
c. 1100–800 BCE
Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
late 8th–7th centuries BCE
The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
7th–6th centuries BCE
Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
6th–5th centuries BCE
Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
5th century BCE
Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
4th century BCE
Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
323–31 BCE
Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.

Floor plan

The rooms follow one another in the order their peoples first appear in the written record.

  1. The Cradle of Citiesc. 3400 BCE to 395 CE. 115 works
  2. The Gift of the Nilec. 4000 BCE to 395 CE. 73 works
  3. The Olympian Orderc. 1600 BCE to 750 CE. 152 works
  4. The Persian Worldc. 2000 BCE to 1010 CE. 30 works
  5. The Levantine Borderlandsc. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 20 works
  6. The Edges of Empirec. 2000 BCE to 1500 CE. 33 works
  7. The Etruscan Worldc. 900 BCE to 750 CE. 22 works
  8. The Roman Inheritancec. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 58 works
  9. The Northern Inheritancec. 2000 BCE to 1600 CE. 131 works