Hecatonchires

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The Hecatonchires, or Hekatonkheires, were three gargantuan figures of an archaic stage of Greek mythology. They were children of Gaia and Uranus,^[1] simply the issue of Earth and Sky, thus part of the very beginning of things (Kerenyi 1951:19) in the submerged prehistory of Greek myth, though they played no part in cult. They were known as Briareus the Vigorous, also called Aigaion, the "sea goat", Cottus the Striker or the Furious, and Gyges (or Gyes) the Big-Limbed. Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν (hekaton; "hundred") and χείρ (kheir; "hand"), and means "Hundred-Handed", "each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads" (Bibliotheca). They were giants of incredible strength and ferocity, even superior to that of the Titans, whom they helped overthrow, and the Cyclopes. In Latin poetry, the Hecatonchires were known as the Centimani, which simply translates "Hundred-Handed Ones."

Soon after they were born, their father, Uranus, threw them into the depths of Tartarus because he saw them as hideous monsters. In some versions of this myth, Uranus saw how ugly the Hecatonchires were at their birth and pushed them back into Gaia's womb, upsetting Gaia greatly, causing her great pain, and setting into motion the overthrow of Uranus by Cronus. In this version of the myth, they were only later imprisoned in Tartarus by Cronus. Another version^{[citation needed]} of the legend seems to say that Gaia wanted Cronus to free the Hecatonchires, but that he didn't, which possibly made them bitter at the Titans.

The Hecatonchires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Gaia that they would serve as good allies against Cronus. During the War of the Titans, the Hecatonchires threw rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, at the Titans, overwhelming them. Hesiod, in continuing the Theogony (734-35) reports the three Hecatonchires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus.

1 Briareos as the "sea-goat" Aigaion
2 Adaptations
3 Notes
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Briareos as the "sea-goat" Aigaion

The sea-goat 'Aigaion "cannot be distinguished from Hesiod's Briareos"^[2] In Virgil's Aeneid (10.566-67), Aeneas is likened in a simile to "Aegaeon," though in Virgil's account Aegaeon fought on the side of the Titans rather than the Olympians; in this Virgil was following the lost Titanomachy rather than the more familiar account in Hesiod.

In the Iliad (i.399) there is a story, found nowhere else in mythology, that at one time the Olympian gods were trying to overthrow Zeus but were stopped when the sea nymph Thetis brought one of the Hecatonchires to his aid, him whom the gods call Briareios but men call Aigaion ("goatish" Iliad i.403).^[3] Hesiod reconciles the archaic Hecatonchires with the Olympian pantheon by making of Briareos the son-in-law of Poseidon, he "giving him Kymopoliea his daughter to wed." (Theogony 817).

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias (Description of Greece ii. 1.6 and 4.7), Briareus was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between sea and sun: he adjudged the Isthmus of Corinth to belong to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) sacred to Helios.

[edit] Adaptations

Briareus is mentioned in the Divine Comedy as "one of the Titans who attacked Jove on Olympus. He is in the pit of the giants in the ninth circle of hell" (Inferno XXXI, l. 99).

The Hecatonchires (under the alternate spelling Hecatoncheires) are listed in the Epic Level Handbook (a Dungeons & Dragons rulebook) as being the most powerful "monsters" available, with a Challenge Rating of 57. For comparison, the Tarrasque, a legendary monster normally at the top of the D&D food chain, has a CR of 20. Even Asmodeus, the diabolic ruler of Hell & virtual god amongst evildoers, has a CR of only 32.

Briareos Hecatonchires is one of the protagonists of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed. He is a cyborg with a Hecatonchires controller. This system allows him control over dozens of limbs or even other bodies without straining himself.

[edit] Notes

^ Hesiod calls them the "Ouranids" (Theogony 502).
^ M.L. West "'Eumelos': A Corinthian Epic Cycle?" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 122 (2002, pp. 109-133) p 111.
^ "At one time he must have shared with the goddess dominion over the depths of the Aegean Sea". (Kerenyi 1951: 24). Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes (i. 1165) represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontus, the Sea, living as a marine god in the Aegean sea. He is a marine deity in Ovid (Metamorphoses (ii. 10) and in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana (iv. 6) (Theoi.com).