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108-522: Titanides may refer to: The sisters of the six Titan (mythology) (a race of powerful deities in Greek mythology) and many of their sons and daughters. Titanide (Gaea trilogy) a fictional race of alien centaurs in John Varley's Gaea Trilogy Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

216-508: A chorus composed of freed Titans. Possibly even earlier than Pindar and Aeschylus, two papyrus versions of a passage of Hesiods' Works and Days also mention Cronus being released by Zeus, and ruling over the heroes who go to the Isle of the Blessed; but other versions of Hesiod's text do not, and most editors judge these lines of text to be later interpolations. It is generally accepted that

324-623: A cobra goddess, however other Egyptian gods and goddesses were also connected to shrew mice. Additionally, the Egyptians would embalm small animals like ichneumons and shrew mice and put their mummies in bronze containers. Leto also took part in the Trojan War , on the Trojans' side, along with her children Apollo and Artemis. When Apollo saved Aeneas from the battlefield, he brought him to one of his own temples in nearby Pergamus, where he

432-482: A great hunter he could kill every animal on earth, angering Gaia who sent a giant scorpion to kill him. In one version, Orion dies after pushing Leto out of the scorpion's way. Afterwards, Leto (and Artemis) placed Orion among the stars (the constellation Orion ). Clinis was a rich Babylonian man who deeply respected Apollo. Having witnessed the Hyperboreans sacrifice donkeys to Apollo, he attempted to do

540-552: A huge stone wrapped in baby's clothes which he swallowed thinking that it was another of Rhea's children. Zeus, now grown, forced Cronus (using some unspecified trickery of Gaia) to disgorge his other five children. Zeus then released his uncles the Cyclopes (apparently still imprisoned beneath the earth, along with the Hundred-Handers, where Uranus had originally confined them) who then provide Zeus with his great weapon,

648-581: A key role in an important part of Greek mythology, the succession myth. It told how the Titan Cronus , the youngest of the Titans, overthrew Uranus , and how in turn Zeus, by waging and winning a great ten-year war pitting the new gods against the old gods, called the Titanomachy ("Titan war"), overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of

756-527: A mortal woman who gave birth to Apollo . Leto is the daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus . Her sister is Asteria , who is, by the Titan Perses , the mother of Hecate . Leto is also sometimes called the daughter of Coeus with no mother specified. The island of Kos , in the southeast Aegean Sea , is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus Siculus states clearly that Leto

864-581: A place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera , the wife of Zeus, in her jealousy ordered all lands to shun her and deny her shelter. Hera is also the one to have sent the monstrous Python , a giant serpent, against Leto to pursue and harm her. Leto eventually found an island, Delos , that was not joined to the mainland or attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land or island and she could give birth. In some stories, Hera further tormented Leto by delaying her labour, leaving Leto in agony for days before she could deliver

972-469: A public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment. The dynastic rite of the witnessed birth must have been familiar to the hymn's hearers. The dynasty that is so concerned about being authenticated in this myth is the new dynasty of Zeus and the Olympian Pantheon , and the goddesses at Delos who bear witness to

1080-456: A scholium on the Iliad that claims to report Theagenes 's interpretation of the gods' battle, Hermes here represents reason and rationality ( λόγος , "logos") as opposed to Leto, who stands in for forgetfulness ( λήθη , "lethe", perhaps a wordplay on Leto's name). After Orion 's sight was restored, he met with Artemis and Leto and joined them in hunting, where he bragged about being such

1188-418: A she-wolf, or that she sought out the "wolf-country" of Lycia, formerly called Tremilis, which she renamed to honour wolves that had befriended her. Another late source, Aelian , also links Leto with wolves and Hyperboreans: Wolves are not easily delivered of their young, only after twelve days and twelve nights, for the people of Delos maintain that this was the length of time that it took Leto to travel from

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1296-552: A similar fashion, in the Iliad , Hera, upon swearing an oath by the underworld river Styx , "invoked by name all the gods below Tartarus, that are called Titans" as witnesses. They were the older gods, but not, apparently, as was once thought, the old gods of an indigenous group in Greece, historically displaced by the new gods of Greek invaders. Rather, they were a group of gods, whose mythology at least, seems to have been borrowed from

1404-416: A succession of kings in heaven: Anu (Sky), Kumarbi , and the storm-god Teshub , with many striking parallels to Hesiod's account of the Greek succession myth. Like Cronus, Kumarbi castrates the sky-god Anu, and takes over his kingship. And like Cronus, Kumarbi swallows gods (and a stone?), one of whom is the storm-god Teshub, who like the storm-god Zeus, is apparently victorious against Kumarbi and others in

1512-772: A thirteenth Titan, Dione , the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. Plato's inclusion of Phorkys, apparently, as a Titan, and the mythographer Apollodorus 's inclusion of Dione , suggests an Orphic tradition in which the canonical twelve Titans consisted of Hesiod's twelve with Phorkys and Dione taking the place of Oceanus and Tethys. The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his somewhat confused genealogy, after listing as offspring of Aether (Upper Sky) and Earth (Gaia), Ocean [Oceanus], Themis, Tartarus, and Pontus, next lists "the Titans", followed by two of Hesiod's Hundred-Handers : Briareus and Gyges, one of Hesiod's three Cyclopes : Steropes, then continues his list with Atlas, Hyperion and Polus, Saturn [Cronus], Ops [Rhea], Moneta , Dione, and

1620-468: A war of the gods. Other Hittite texts contain allusions to "former gods" ( karuilies siunes ), precisely what Hesiod called the Titans, theoi proteroi . Like the Titans, these Hittite karuilies siunes , were twelve (usually) in number and end up confined in the underworld by the storm-god Teshub, imprisoned by gates they cannot open. In Hurrian, the Hittite's karuilies siunes were known as

1728-602: A welcome volunteer, on the side of Zeus; and it is by reason of my counsel that the cavernous gloom of Tartarus now hides ancient Cronus and his allies within it. The mythographer Apollodorus , gives a similar account of the succession myth to Hesiod's, but with a few significant differences. According to Apollodorus, there were thirteen original Titans, adding the Titaness Dione to Hesiod's list. The Titans (instead of being Uranus' firstborn as in Hesiod) were born after

1836-692: Is Latona , a Latinization of her name, influenced by the Etruscan Letun . In ancient art, she is presented as a modest, veiled woman in the presence of her children and Zeus, or in the process of being carried off by Tityos. 'Leto' is Attic Greek ; in the Doric Greek dialect, spoken in Sparta and the surrounding areas her name was spelled Lato with an alpha instead ( Ancient Greek : Λατώ , romanized :  Latṓ ; pronounced [laːtɔ̌ː] ). There are several explanations for

1944-525: Is a goddess and the mother of Apollo and Artemis . She is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe , and the sister of Asteria . In the Olympian scheme, the king of gods Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, whom Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for

2052-501: Is a slightly later poet, Pindar. The two earliest poets, Homer and Hesiod , confirm Artemis and Apollo's status as full siblings born to Leto by Zeus, but neither explicitly makes them twins. According to the Homeric Hymn 3 to Delian Apollo , Leto travelled far and wide to find a place to give birth, but none of them dared be the birthplace of Apollo. After having arrived at Delos, she labored for nine nights and nine days, in

2160-462: Is ever glad for having borne the king of gods such a splendid son and archer. According to the Bibliotheca , "But Latona for her intrigue with Zeus was hunted by Hera over the whole earth, till she came to Delos and brought forth first Artemis, by the help of whose midwifery she afterwards gave birth to Apollo." Antoninus Liberalis hints that Leto came down from Hyperborea in the guise of

2268-474: Is found at Olympus among the other gods, having gained her seat next to Zeus, or accompanying and helping her son and daughter in their various endeavors. In antiquity, Leto was usually worshipped in conjunction with her twin children, particularly in the sacred island of Delos, as a kourotrophic deity, the goddess of motherhood; in Lycia she was a mother goddess . In Roman mythology , Leto's Roman equivalent

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2376-435: Is remarkable that Leto brought forth Artemis, the elder twin, without travail. Libanius wrote that neither land nor visible islands would receive Leto, but by the will of Zeus Delos then became visible, and thus received Leto and the children. According to Hyginus , when Hera discovered that Leto was pregnant by Zeus, she banned Leto from giving birth on " terra firma ", the mainland, any island at sea, or any place under

2484-716: Is round about them", and further, that Zeus "thrust Cronos down to dwell beneath earth and the unresting sea." Brief mentions of the Titanomachy and the imprisonment of the Titans in Tartarus also occur in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound . In the Hymn , Hera, angry at Zeus, calls upon the "Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men". In Prometheus Bound , Prometheus (the son of

2592-444: Is said to have despaired at the sight of his unkempt and disheveled locks, which had been admired by even Hera. Praxilla wrote that Carneus was a son of Zeus and Europa , and that he was brought up by Apollo and Leto. Leto's introduction into Lycia was met with resistance. There, according to Ovid 's Metamorphoses , when Leto was wandering the earth after giving birth to Apollo and Artemis, she attempted to drink water from

2700-455: Is uncertain. Hesiod in the Theogony gives a double etymology, deriving it from titaino [to strain] and tisis [vengeance], saying that Uranus gave them the name Titans: "in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards". But modern scholars doubt Hesiod's etymology. Jane Ellen Harrison asserts that

2808-458: The Orphic Hymn 35 to Leto describes her as "dark-veiled" and "goddess who gave birth to twins" ( θεός διδυματόκος ). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , she is described as golden-haired. Hesiod makes her the sixth out of the seven wives of Zeus, who bore his children before his marriage to Hera, however this element is absent in later accounts, all of which speak of a liaison between

2916-479: The Cyclopes in revenge for Zeus slaying his son Asclepius , a gifted healer who could bring the dead back to life, with a thunderbolt, Zeus was about to punish Apollo by throwing him into Tartarus , but Leto interceded for him, and Apollo became bondman to a mortal king named Admetus instead. Apollo happily served Admetus, and enthusiastically undertook several domestic chores during his servitude with him. Leto

3024-583: The Dead Gods ( Dingiruggû ), the Banished Gods ( ilāni darsūti ), and the Defeated (or Bound) Gods ( ilāni kamûti ). In Orphic literature, the Titans play an important role in what is often considered to be the central myth of Orphism , the sparagmos , that is the dismemberment of Dionysus , who in this context is often given the title Zagreus . As pieced together from various ancient sources,

3132-665: The Ecdysia ("stripping naked") festival in her honour. In one version, Leto, along with her daughter Artemis, stood before Zeus with tearful eyes while her son Apollo pleaded with him to release Prometheus (the god who had stolen fire from the gods, give them to humans, and was subsequently chained in the Caucasus with an eagle feasting on his liver each day for punishment) from his eternal torment. Zeus, moved by Artemis and Leto's tears and Apollo's words, agreed instantly and commanded Heracles to free Prometheus. When Apollo killed

3240-527: The Near East (see "Near East origins," below). These imported gods gave context and provided a backstory for the Olympian gods, explaining where these Greek Olympian gods had come from, and how they had come to occupy their position of supremacy in the cosmos. The Titans were the previous generation, and family of gods, whom the Olympians had to overthrow, and banish from the upper world, in order to become

3348-726: The "gods of down under" ( enna durenna ) and the Hittites identified these gods with the Anunnaki , the Babylonian gods of the underworld, whose defeat and imprisonment by the storm-god Marduk , in the Babylonian poem Enûma Eliš (late second millennium BC or earlier), parallels the defeat and imprisonment of the Titans. Other collectivities of gods, perhaps associated with the Mesopotamian Anunnaki, include

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3456-476: The Eating of Flesh , Plutarch writes of "stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood". While, according to the early 4th century AD Christian apologist Arnobius , and the 5th century AD Greek epic poet Nonnus , it is as punishment for their murder of Dionysus that

3564-813: The Greek succession myth was imported from the Near East , and that along with this imported myth came stories of a group of former ruling gods, who had been defeated and displaced, and who became identified, by the Greeks, as the Titans. Features of Hesiod's account of the Titans can be seen in the stories of the Hurrians , the Hittites , the Babylonians , and other Near Eastern cultures. The Hurro - Hittite text Song of Kumarbi (also called Kingship in Heaven ), written five hundred years before Hesiod, tells of

3672-419: The Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes in Tartarus. Although Hesiod does not say how Zeus was eventually able to free his siblings, according to Apollodorus, Zeus was aided by Oceanus' daughter Metis , who gave Cronus an emetic which forced him to disgorge his children that he had swallowed. According to Apollodorus, in the tenth year of the ensuing war, Zeus learned from Gaia, that he would be victorious if he had

3780-565: The Hundred-Handers and the Cyclopes as allies. So Zeus slew their warder Campe (a detail not found in Hesiod) and released them, and in addition to giving Zeus his thunderbolt (as in Hesiod), the Cyclopes also gave Poseidon his trident , and Hades a helmet, and "with these weapons the gods overcame the Titans, shut them up in Tartarus, and appointed the Hundred-handers their guards". The Roman mythographer Hyginus , in his Fabulae , gives an unusual (and perhaps confused) account of

3888-592: The Hyperboreoi to Delos. Leto found the barren floating island of Delos, still bearing its archaic name of Asterios, which was neither mainland nor a real island and gave birth there, promising the island wealth from the worshippers who would flock to the obscure birthplace of the splendid god who was to come. As a gesture of gratitude, Delos was secured with four pillars and later became sacred to Apollo. Callimachus states that not only did every place on earth refuse to give sanctuary to Leto out of fear of Hera, but

3996-540: The Sun), would seem to be the result of cosmological necessity, for how could a world encircling river, or the Sun, be confined in Tartarus? As for other male offspring of the Titans, some seem to have participated in the Titanomachy, and were punished as a result, and others did not, or at least (like Helios) remained free. Three of Iapetus' sons, Atlas , Menoetius , and Prometheus are specifically connected by ancient sources with

4104-470: The Titan Iapetus ) refers to the Titanomachy, and his part in it: When first the heavenly powers were moved to wrath, and mutual dissension was stirred up among them—some bent on casting Cronus from his seat so Zeus, in truth, might reign; others, eager for the contrary end, that Zeus might never win mastery over the gods—it was then that I, although advising them for the best, was unable to persuade

4212-468: The Titan offspring of Uranus and Gaia were Oceanus , Coeus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , Theia , Rhea , Themis , Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Tethys , and Cronus . Eight of the Titan brothers and sisters married each other: Oceanus and Tethys, Coeus and Phoebe, Hyperion and Theia, and Cronus and Rhea. The other two Titan brothers married outside their immediate family. Iapetus married his niece Clymene ,

4320-492: The Titaness Tethys . Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound , has Oceanus free to visit his nephew Prometheus sometime after the war. Like Oceanus, Helios, the Titan son of Hyperion, certainly remained free to drive his sun-chariot daily across the sky, taking an active part in events subsequent to the Titanomachy. The freedom of Oceanus, along with Helios (Sun), and perhaps Hyperion (to the extent that he also represented

4428-427: The Titanomachy, but Prometheus does remain free, in the Theogony , for his deception of Zeus at Mecone and his subsequent theft of fire , for which transgressions Prometheus was famously punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock where an eagle came to eat his "immortal liver" every day, which then grew back every night. However Aeschylus 's Prometheus Bound (as mentioned above) does have Prometheus say that he

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4536-438: The Titanomachy, their war with the Olympians. As a group, they have no further role in conventional Greek myth, nor do they play any part in Greek cult. As individuals, few of the Titans have any separate identity. Aside from Cronus, the only other figure Homer mentions by name as being a Titan is Iapetus. Some Titans seem only to serve a genealogical function, providing parents for more important offspring: Coeus and Phoebe as

4644-461: The Titanomachy. According to Hyginus the Titanomachy came about because of a dispute between Jupiter and Juno (the Roman equivalents of Zeus and Hera). Juno, Jupiter's jealous wife, was angry at her husband, on account of Jupiter's son Epaphus by Io (one of her husband's many lovers). Because of this Juno incited the Titans to rebel against Jupiter and restore Saturn (Cronus) to the kingship of

4752-791: The Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Cronus and Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne (i.e. the river gods, the Oceanids, the Olympians, the Horae, the Moirai, and the Muses) are not normally considered to be Titans, descendants of the other Titans, notably: Leto, Helios, Atlas, and Prometheus, are themselves sometimes referred to as Titans. Passages in a section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus suggest

4860-406: The Titans end up imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus. The only ancient source to explicitly connect the sparagmos and the anthropogony is the 6th century AD Neoplatonist Olympiodorus , who writes that, according to Orpheus, after the Titans had dismembered and eaten Dionysus, "Zeus, angered by the deed, blasts them with his thunderbolts, and from the sublimate of the vapors that rise from them comes

4968-514: The Titans in a revolt against Zeus (Jupiter). The Theogony has Menoetius struck down by Zeus' thunderbolt and cast into Erebus "because of his mad presumption and exceeding pride". Whether Hesiod was using Erebus as another name for Tartarus (as was sometimes done), or meant that Menoetius's punishment was because of his participation in the Titanomachy is unclear, and no other early source mentions this event, however Apollodorus says that it was. Hesiod does not mention Prometheus in connection with

5076-489: The Titans, children of Heaven and Earth; but they, disdaining counsels of craft, in the pride of their strength thought to gain the mastery without a struggle and by force. ... That it was not by brute strength nor through violence, but by guile that those who should gain the upper hand were destined to prevail. And though I argued all this to them, they did not pay any attention to my words. With all that before me, it seemed best that, joining with my mother, I should place myself,

5184-538: The Titans, defeating them and throwing them into Tartarus , with the Hundred-Handers as their guards. Only brief references to the Titans and the succession myth are found in Homer . In the Iliad , Homer tells us that "the gods ... that are called Titans" reside in Tartarus. Specifically, Homer says that "Iapetus and Cronos ... have joy neither in the rays of Helios Hyperion [the Sun] nor in any breeze, but deep Tartarus

5292-404: The basis for an Orphic doctrine of the divinity of man." However, when and to what extent there existed any Orphic tradition which included these elements is the subject of open debate. The 2nd century AD biographer and essayist Plutarch makes a connection between the sparagmos and the punishment of the Titans, but makes no mention of the anthropogony, or Orpheus, or Orphism. In his essay On

5400-440: The blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys , whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner. Prometheus Lyomenos , an undated lost play by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 455 BC), had

5508-484: The celestial personifications Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn). From Iapetus and Clymene came Atlas , Menoetius , Prometheus , and Epimetheus . From Cronus and Rhea came the Olympians: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon , and Zeus. By Zeus, Themis bore the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne bore the nine Muses . While the descendants of

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5616-406: The child. The Titans whiten their faces with gypsum, and distracting the infant Dionysus with various toys, including a mirror, they seized Dionysus and tore (or cut) him to pieces. The pieces were then boiled, roasted and partially eaten, by the Titans. But Athena managed to save Dionysus' heart, by which Zeus was able to contrive his rebirth from Semele. Commonly presented as a part of the myth of

5724-428: The children she birthed. This he did with the first five: Hestia , Demeter , Hera , Hades , Poseidon (in that order), to Rhea's great sorrow. However, when Rhea was pregnant with Zeus, Rhea begged her parents Gaia and Uranus to help her save Zeus. So they sent Rhea to Lyctus on Crete to bear Zeus, and Gaia took the newborn Zeus to raise, hiding him deep in a cave beneath Mount Aigaion. Meanwhile, Rhea gave Cronus

5832-566: The cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war called "the Titanomachy " ( Ancient Greek : ἡ Τῑτᾱνομαχίᾱ , romanized :  hē Tītānomakhíā , lit.   'a battle of Titans'). As a result of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus . Some Titans were apparently allowed to remain free. According to Hesiod ,

5940-495: The cosmos. According to the standard version of the succession myth, given in Hesiod's Theogony , Uranus initially produced eighteen children with Gaia: the twelve Titans, the three Cyclopes , and the three Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handers), but hating them, he hid them away somewhere inside Gaia. Angry and in distress, Gaia fashioned a sickle made of adamant and urged her children to punish their father. Only her son Cronus

6048-479: The daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, while Crius married his half-sister Eurybia , the daughter of Gaia and Pontus . The two remaining Titan sisters, Themis and Mnemosyne, became wives of their nephew Zeus . From Oceanus and Tethys came the three thousand river gods , and three thousand Oceanid nymphs. From Coeus and Phoebe came Leto , another wife of Zeus, and Asteria . From Crius and Eurybia came Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses . From Hyperion and Theia came

6156-412: The deathless gods, mild from the beginning," the gentlest goddess in all Olympus . Plato also makes references to Leto's softness when trying to link etymologically her name to the word ἐθελήμονα ("willing", i.e. to assist those asking for her help), as well as λεῖον ("mild"). Next to Demeter , Leto was the most celebrated mother of the ancient world. Hesiod describes Leto as "dark-gowned" and

6264-420: The dismembered Dionysus Zagreus, is an Orphic anthropogony, that is an Orphic account of the origin of human beings. According to this widely held view, as punishment for their crime, Zeus struck the Titans with his thunderbolt , and from the remains of the destroyed Titans humankind was born, which resulted in a human inheritance of ancestral guilt, for this original sin of the Titans, and by some accounts "formed

6372-583: The enemies of Apollo and Artemis for attempting to cause harm to their mother. One of the monsters that came across Leto was the dragon Python , which lived in a cleft of the mother-rock beneath Delphi and beside the Castalian Spring . Once Python knew that Leto was pregnant to Zeus, he hunted her down with the intention to harm her, and once he could not find her, he returned to Parnassus . An epigram from 159 BC seems to imply that Python in particular wanted to rape Leto. According to some, Python

6480-430: The farthest part of huge earth. They cannot get out, for Poseidon has set bronze gates upon it, and a wall is extended on both sides. However, besides Cronus, exactly which of the other Titans were supposed to have been imprisoned in Tartarus is unclear. The only original Titan, mentioned by name, as being confined with Cronus in Tartarus, is Iapetus . But, not all the Titans were imprisoned there. Certainly Oceanus ,

6588-504: The first generation of Olympians: the six siblings Zeus , Hades , Poseidon , Hestia , Demeter , and Hera . Certain descendants of the Titans, such as Prometheus , Atlas , Helios , and Leto , are sometimes also called Titans. The Titans were the former gods: the generation of gods preceding the Olympians . They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled

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6696-429: The fountain. In the story of Niobe , Queen Niobe boasts of being a better mother than Leto due to having given birth to a greater number of children than the goddess. Leto then asks her twin children to avenge her, and they respond by shooting all of Niobe's sons and daughters dead as punishment. In another myth, the gigantic Tityos attempts to violate Leto, only for him to be slain by Artemis and Apollo. Usually, Leto

6804-460: The goddesses changed them into birds before they could be killed by the donkeys. In Crete lived a poor couple, Galatea and Lamprus. When Galatea fell pregnant, Lamprus warned her that if the child turned out to be female, he would expose it. Galatea gave birth while Lamprus was away, and the infant proved indeed to be a girl. Galatea, fearing her husband, lied to him and told him it was a boy instead whom she named Leucippus ("white horse"). But as

6912-410: The gods. Jupiter, with the help of Minerva ( Athena ), Apollo , and Diana ( Artemis ), put down the rebellion, and hurled the Titans (as in other accounts) down to Tartarus. After being overthrown in the Titanomachy, Cronus and his fellow vanquished Titans were cast into Tartarus: That is where the Titan gods are hidden under murky gloom by the plans of the cloud-gatherer Zeus, in a dank place, at

7020-413: The great world encircling river, seems to have remained free, and in fact, seems not to have fought on the Titans' side at all. In Hesiod, Oceanus sends his daughter Styx , with her children Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Power), and Bia (Force), to fight on Zeus' side against the Titans, while in the Iliad , Hera says that, during the Titanomachy, she was cared for by Oceanus and his wife

7128-606: The matter from which men are created." Olympiodorus goes on to conclude that, because the Titans had eaten his flesh, we their descendants, are a part of Dionysus. Some 19th- and 20th-century scholars, including Jane Ellen Harrison , have argued that an initiatory or shamanic ritual underlies the myth of the dismemberment and cannibalism of Dionysus by the Titans. Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. The etymology of Τiτᾶνες ( Titanes )

7236-641: The missing sections of the Siphnian frieze from Delphi, another relief depiction of the battle of the gods against the Giants. When the gigantic Typhon attacked Olympus, all the gods transformed into animals and fled to Egypt terrified, or alternatively Typhon attacked them once they had assembled in Egypt in great numbers. Leto turned into a shrew mouse. Leto was equated with the Egyptian goddess Wadjet ,

7344-425: The myth of Semele and her son Dionysus , another story of a mortal woman who bore an important son for Zeus and was punished by Hera for that. Yet at the same time Hesiodic tradition makes her the daughter of two Titans, elder gods, and one of Zeus' first seven wives. Leto's peculiar mythology and ontology has led to suggestions that she might be a composite of two figures, an immortal goddess who bore Artemis , and

7452-545: The nine Muses . Leto, who gives birth to the Olympians Apollo and Artemis , takes an active part on the side of the Trojans in the Iliad , and is also involved in the story of the giant Tityos . Tethys, presumably along with her husband Oceanus, took no part in the war, and, as mentioned above, provided safe refuge for Hera during the war. Rhea remains free and active after the war: appearing at Leto's delivery of Apollo, as Zeus' messenger to Demeter announcing

7560-411: The origin of the Greek name Λήδα Leda . Other scholars ( Kretschmer , Bethe , Chantraine , and Beekes ) have suggested a pre-Greek origin. In Mycenaean Greek her name has been attested through the form Latios , meaning "son of Leto" or "related to Leto" ( Linear B : 𐀨𐀴𐀍 , ra-ti-jo ), and Lato (Linear B: 𐀨𐀵 , ra-to ). Leto was identified from the fourth century onwards as

7668-435: The origin of the goddess and the meaning of her name. Older sources speculated that the name is related to the Greek λήθη lḗthē ( lethe , oblivion ) and λωτός lotus (the fruit that brings oblivion to those who eat it). It would thus mean "the hidden one". In 20th century sources Leto is traditionally derived from Lycian lada , "wife", as her earliest cult was centered in Lycia . Lycian lada may also be

7776-488: The parents of Leto , the mother, by Zeus, of the Olympians Apollo and Artemis ; Hyperion and Theia as the parents of Helios , Selene and Eos ; Iapetus as the father of Atlas and Prometheus ; and Crius as the father of three sons Astraeus , Pallas , and Perses , who themselves seem only to exist to provide fathers for more important figures such as the Anemoi (Winds), Nike (Victory), and Hecate . The Titans play

7884-435: The parents of Oceanus and Tethys, and Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of Cronus and Rhea "and all that go with them", plus Phorcys . In his Cratylus , Plato quotes Orpheus as saying that Oceanus and Tethys were "the first to marry", possibly also reflecting an Orphic theogony in which Oceanus and Tethys, rather than Uranus and Gaia, were the primeval parents. To Hesiod's twelve Titans, the mythographer Apollodorus , adds

7992-541: The possibility that Homer knew of a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the parents of the Titans. Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys", while in the same passage Hypnos describes Oceanus as "from whom they all are sprung". Plato , in his Timaeus , provides a genealogy (probably Orphic) which perhaps reflected an attempt to reconcile this apparent divergence between Homer and Hesiod, with Uranus and Gaia as

8100-468: The presence of Dione, Rhea , Ichnaea , Themis and the sea-goddess Amphitrite . Only Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, was not present; she, unaware of the situation, was with jealous Hera on Olympus. Her absence, which was preventing Leto from giving birth, kept her in labor for nine days. According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to witness the birth of Apollo were responding to

8208-539: The principal local mother goddess of Anatolian Lycia , as the region became Hellenized. In Greek inscriptions, the children of Leto are referred to as the "national gods" of the country. Her sanctuary, the Letoon near Xanthos , predated Hellenic influence in the region, however, united the Lycian confederacy of city-states. The Hellenes of Kos also claimed Leto as their own. Another sanctuary, more recently identified,

8316-419: The queen of gods had also deployed Ares and Iris to drive Leto away from anywhere she tried to settle in, so she would not give birth to her twins. Leto considered the island of Kos for a birthplace, but Apollo, still in the womb, advised his mother against giving birth to him there, saying Kos was fated to be the birthplace of someone else . He later urged his mother to go to Delos. Callimachus wrote that it

8424-580: The reconstructed story, usually given by modern scholars, goes as follows. Zeus had intercourse with Persephone in the form of a serpent, producing Dionysus. He is taken to Mount Ida where (like the infant Zeus) he is guarded by the dancing Curetes . Zeus intended Dionysus to be his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but a jealous Hera incited the Titans—;who apparently unlike in Hesiod and Homer, were not imprisoned in Tartarus—;to kill

8532-400: The rightness of the birth are the great goddesses of the old order. Demeter was not present and Aphrodite was not either, but Rhea attended. The goddess Dione (her name simply means "divine" or "she-Zeus") is sometimes taken by later mythographers as a mere feminine form of Zeus (see entry Dodona ). If that was the case, she would not have assembled there. Then, on the ninth day, Eileithyia

8640-407: The ruling pantheon of Greek gods. For Hesiod, possibly in order to match the twelve Olympian gods, there were twelve Titans: six males and six females, with some of Hesiod's names perhaps being mere poetic inventions, so as to arrive at the right number. In Hesiod's Theogony , apart from Cronus, the Titans play no part at all in the overthrow of Uranus, and we only hear of their collective action in

8748-431: The same, only to be prohibited by the god himself under pain of death. Clinis obeyed and sent the donkeys away, but two of his sons proceeded with the sacrifice anyway. Apollo, enraged, drove the donkeys mad which then began to devour the entire family. Leto and Artemis felt sorry for Clinis, his third son and his daughter, who had done nothing to deserve such fate. Apollo allowed his mother and sister to save those three, and

8856-428: The settlement concerning Persephone , bringing Pelops back to life. While in Hesiod's Theogony , and Homer's Iliad , Cronus and the other Titans are confined to Tartarus—apparently forever —another tradition, as indicated by later sources, seems to have had Cronus, or other of the Titans, being eventually set free. Pindar , in one of his poems (462 BC), says that, although Atlas still "strains against

8964-495: The sole exception (besides Leto) is found in the Suda , a late Byzantine lexicon which recounts the story of Hera cursing a pregnant Aphrodite 's belly, leading to the birth of Priapus . Moreover, Leto's troubled childbirth bears resemblance to Alcmene 's, as both suffered painful extended labours due to Hera not allowing Eileithyia , the goddess of childbirth, to help them, and both stories overall are also thematically linked to

9072-470: The sun. But Zeus then sent Boreas , the god of the north wind, to Leto, who brought her to Poseidon. Poseidon then raised high waves above Ortygia , shielding it from the light of the sun with a water dome; it was later called the island of Delos. There Leto, clinging to an olive tree, bore Apollo and Artemis after four days. According to the Homeric Hymn and the Orphic Hymn 35 to Leto , Artemis

9180-569: The three Furies : Alecto , Megaera , and Tisiphone . The geographer Pausanias , mentions seeing the image of a man in armor, who was supposed to be the Titan Anytos , who was said to have raised the Arcadian Despoina . The Titans, as a group, represent a pre-Olympian order. Hesiod uses the expression "the former gods" ( theoi proteroi ) in reference to the Titans. They were the banished gods, who were no longer part of

9288-422: The three Hundred-Handers and the three Cyclopes , and while Uranus imprisoned these first six of his offspring, he apparently left the Titans free. Not just Cronus, but all the Titans, except Oceanus, attacked Uranus. After Cronus castrated Uranus, the Titans freed the Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes (unlike in Hesiod, where they apparently remained imprisoned), and made Cronus their sovereign, who then reimprisoned

9396-421: The thunderbolt, which had been hidden by Gaia. A great war was begun, the Titanomachy , for control of the cosmos. The Titans fought from Mount Othrys , while the Olympians fought from Mount Olympus . In the tenth year of that great war, following Gaia's counsel, Zeus released the Hundred-Handers, who joined the war against the Titans, helping Zeus to gain the upper hand. Zeus cast the fury of his thunderbolt at

9504-509: The title Titanides . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Titanides&oldid=465902852 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Titan (mythology) After Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea, she bore

9612-451: The twins, especially Apollo. Once Apollo and Artemis are born and grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played. Besides the myth of the birth of Artemis and Apollo, Leto appears in other notable myths, usually where she punishes mortals for their hubris against her. After some Lycian peasants prevented her and her infants from drinking from a fountain, Leto transformed them all into frogs inhabiting

9720-733: The two, that ended up in Leto falling pregnant. When Hera, the goddess of marriage and family, queen of the gods and the wife of Zeus, figured it out, she pursued her relentlessly. The Homeric Hymn 3 to Apollo is the oldest extant account of Leto's wandering and birth of her children, but it is only concerned with the birth of Apollo, and treats Artemis as an afterthought; in fact the hymn does not even state that Leto's children are twins, and they are given different birthplaces (he in Delos, she in Ortygia ). The first to speak of Leto's children being twins

9828-477: The upper world. Rather they were the gods who dwelt underground in Tartarus , and as such, they may have been thought of as "gods of the underworld", who were the antithesis of, and in opposition to, the Olympians, the gods of the heavens. Hesiod called the Titans "earth-born" ( chthonic ), and in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , Hera prays to the Titans "who dwell beneath the earth", calling on them to aid her against Zeus, just as if they were chthonic spirits. In

9936-423: The war. In the Theogony both Atlas and Menoetius received punishments from Zeus, but Hesiod does not say for what crime exactly they were punished. Atlas was famously punished by Zeus, by being forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders, but none of the early sources for this story (Hesiod, Homer, Pindar , and Aeschylus ) say that his punishment was as a result of the war. According to Hyginus however, Atlas led

10044-456: The weight of the sky ... Zeus freed the Titans", and in another poem (476 BC), Pindar has Cronus, in fact, ruling in the Isles of the Blessed , a land where the Greek heroes reside in the afterlife: Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus' road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of

10152-668: The word "Titan" comes from the Greek τίτανος, signifying white "earth, clay, or gypsum", and that the Titans were "white clay men", or men covered by white clay or gypsum dust in their rituals. The planet Saturn is named for the Roman equivalent of the Titan Cronus. Saturn's largest moon, Titan , is named after the Titans generally, and the other moons of Saturn are named after individual Titans, specifically Tethys , Phoebe , Rhea , Hyperion , and Iapetus . Astronomer William Henry Pickering claimed to have discovered another moon of Saturn which he named Themis , but this discovery

10260-410: The years passed, Leucippus grew to be an exceptionally beautiful girl, and her true sex could no longer be concealed. Galatea fled to the temple of Leto, and prayed to the goddess to change Leucippus into an actual boy. Leto took pity in mother and child, and fulfilled Galatea's wish, changing Leucippus's sex into that of a boy's. To celebrate this, the people at Phaistos sacrificed to Leto Phytia during

10368-461: Was a child of Gaia, it was necessary that the ancient Delphic Oracle passed to the protection of the new god. Another one was the giant Tityos , a phallic being who grew so vast that he split his mother's womb and had to be carried to term by Gaia (the Earth) herself. He attempted to rape Leto near Delphi under the orders of Hera, like Python was, for having slept with Zeus, or alternatively he

10476-490: Was an ally of Zeus during the Titanomachy. The female Titans, to the extent that they are mentioned at all, appear also to have been allowed to remain free. Three of these, according to the Theogony , become wives of Zeus : Themis , Mnemosyne , and Leto , the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe . Themis gives birth to the three Horae (Hours), and the three Moirai (Fates), and Mnemosyne gives birth to

10584-506: Was at Oenoanda in the north of Lycia. There was a further Letoon at Delos . Leto is exceptional among Zeus ' divine lovers for being the only one who was tormented by Hera , who otherwise only directs her anger toward mortal women and nymphs, but not goddesses, thus being treated more in line with mortal women than divine beings in mythology. Zeus had various affairs with goddesses like Themis , Nemesis , Dione , Thetis , Selene , Persephone , and more, which were never harmed by Hera;

10692-446: Was born first because first came the night, whose instrument is the moon, which Artemis represents, and then the day, whose instrument is the sun, which Apollo represents. Pindar however writes that both twins shone like the sun when they came into the bright light. Leto was threatened and assailed in her wanderings by ancient earth creatures that had to be overcome, chthonic monsters of the ancient earth and old ways, and these became

10800-572: Was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos. Both sisters captured Zeus's heart; first Leto, and then Asteria, who caught his attention after Leto had already been impregnated with his twins. Unlike Leto, Asteria did not reciprocate his love. In Homeric texts, Leto is shown standing next to Zeus in the absence of Hera almost in the manner of a married wife, and not just one mistress among the many. Hesiod describes Leto as "always mild, kind to men and to

10908-546: Was born on the island of Ortygia before Apollo was on Delos. Stephanus of Byzantium also states that Artemis was born before Apollo, however he claims that she was born at Coressus. According to a local tradition, Apollo was not born on Delos at all, but in Tegyra, a town in Boeotia , where he was worshipped as Apollo Tegyraeus. Servius , a grammarian who lived during the late 300s AD and early 400s AD, wrote that Artemis

11016-521: Was healed by Artemis and Leto. Later, when the gods battle each other, Leto supports the Trojans, standing opposite of Hermes , who supports the Achaeans. After witnessing Hera defeat Artemis and beating her with her own bow, and Artemis fleeing in tears, Hermes refuses to challenge Leto, encouraging her to simply tell everyone she beat him fair and square. Leto picks up Artemis's discarded bow and arrows and runs after her crying daughter. According to

11124-508: Was never confirmed, and the name Themis was given to an asteroid, 24 Themis . Asteroid 57 Mnemosyne was also named for the Titan. A proto-planet Theia is hypothesized to have been involved in a collision in the early solar system, forming the Earth's moon. Leto In ancient Greek mythology and religion , Leto ( / ˈ l iː t oʊ / ; Ancient Greek : Λητώ , romanized :  Lētṓ pronounced [lɛːtɔ̌ː] )

11232-580: Was punished by having his liver being constantly eaten by two vultures in the Underworld . Leto fought alongside the other gods during the Gigantomachy , as evidenced from her depiction on the east frieze of the Pergamon Altar , fighting a Giant between her children Artemis and Apollo; None of the other Gigantomachy depictions includes Leto, although her presence is conjectured in one of

11340-490: Was sent by Hera herself to attack Leto, out of jealousy for having been preferred by Zeus and he knew of a prophecy that he would find death at the hands of Leto's unborn son. According to Clearchus of Soli , while Python was pursuing them, Leto stepped on a stone and, holding her son in her hands, cried ἵε παῖ ( híe paî , meaning "shoot, child") to Apollo, who was holding a bow and arrows. Apollo slew it but had to do penance and be cleansed afterward, since though Python

11448-546: Was sent for by the messenger goddess Iris , who persuaded her with a necklace and brought her to Delos. As soon as Eileithyia arrived, Apollo was finally allowed to be born, and was given ambrosia and nectar by Themis , rather than breastmilk. Preceding the myth of Apollo's birth, the preface of the hymn begins with the status quo that was then established, namely that Leto is now by the side of Zeus in Olympus, both proudly watching Apollo exercise his archery skills, and she

11556-408: Was simply overwhelmed with lust when he saw her. Tityos took hold of Leto and attempted to force himself on her, but she called out for her children, and Tityos was laid low by the arrows of Apollo and/or Artemis, as Pindar recalled in a Pythian ode. As he laid dying, his mother Gaia moaned over her slain son; Leto only laughed. For the crime of having tried to rape Leto, one of Zeus' mistresses, he

11664-558: Was willing. So Gaia hid Cronus in "ambush", gave him an adamantine sickle, and when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus reached out and castrated his father. This enabled the Titans to be born and Cronus to assume supreme command of the cosmos, with the Titans as his subordinates. Cronus, having now taken over control of the cosmos from Uranus, wanted to ensure that he maintained control. Uranus and Gaia had prophesied to Cronus that one of Cronus' own children would overthrow him, so when Cronus married Rhea, he made sure to swallow each of

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