Hecatoncheires- Greek GroupCollective"Hundred-Handed Ones"

The Hundred-Handed Giants

The Hecatoncheires were three monstrous giants — Cottus (the Striker), Briareos (the Vigorous), and Gyges (the Big-Limbed) — born to Gaia and Uranus. Each possessed a hundred hands and fifty heads. Uranus took one look at them and thrust them back into the earth immediately after their birth, imprisoning them in Tartarus alongside their brothers the Cyclopes.

Imprisonment and Liberation

The Hecatoncheires remained imprisoned through the reign of Kronos, who had overthrown Uranus but feared the Hundred-Handed Ones no less than his father had. When Zeus rose against Kronos and the Titans, the war raged for ten years without decisive result. Gaia prophesied that Zeus could only win with the Hecatoncheires' help. He descended to Tartarus, found the three giants in the dark, and revived them with nectar and ambrosia. They took his side.

The Turning of the Tide

Zeus hurled thunderbolts from Olympus while the Hecatoncheires launched their barrage from below. Each giant could hurl a hundred boulders at once — three hundred stones in a single volley from all three. They bombarded the Titan positions on Mount Othrys with such force that the earth shook and the sea boiled. The Titans, who had held out for a decade, broke. They were driven from their stronghold and cast down into Tartarus, as far below the earth as the sky is above it.

Wardens of Tartarus

After the victory, Zeus stationed the Hecatoncheires at the bronze gates of Tartarus as eternal guardians of the defeated Titans. Briareos alone appears in later myth. When the gods conspired to bind Zeus, the sea-goddess Thetis summoned Briareos to Olympus. Homer says the gods call him Briareos but men call him Aigaion. The hundred-handed giant sat beside Zeus's throne, and the conspirators abandoned their plot. At Corinth, Pausanias records, Briareos served as judge in the dispute between Poseidon and Helios over the city's territory.