Mount Othrys- Greek LocationLocation · Landmark"Seat of the Titans"

Stronghold of the Titans

Before there was Olympus, there was Othrys. The mountain rises in southern Thessaly, and in the age when Kronos ruled the cosmos, it was the seat of Titan power. From its heights Kronos held dominion over the world after overthrowing his father Ouranos and claiming the sky for himself. The elder Titans gathered on Othrys, and for an age no force challenged them.

That changed when Zeus, hidden as an infant on Crete and grown to manhood, rose against his father. The younger gods claimed Mount Olympus as their stronghold, and the two mountains became opposing fortresses in the war that would decide the shape of the world.

The Titanomachy

The war lasted ten years. The earth groaned and the great forest roared as the two sides clashed between the mountains. Kronos held Othrys with Atlas, Iapetus, Coeus, Hyperion, and Crius, though Prometheus broke ranks and sided with Zeus.

The turning point came when Zeus descended into Tartarus and freed the Hecatoncheires — Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, the hundred-handed. They hurled three hundred boulders at a time upon the Titan positions on Othrys. The Cyclopes, also freed, had forged Zeus his thunderbolts. With these weapons and the Hecatoncheires' barrage, the Olympians broke the Titan line. The final assault shook Othrys to its roots, and the Titans were overwhelmed and cast down into Tartarus, bound in chains beneath the earth.

Aftermath

Othrys stood empty after the war. The seat of power shifted to Olympus, and the defeated Titans lay imprisoned in Tartarus, guarded by the same Hecatoncheires who had broken them. Atlas alone was denied the darkness of imprisonment — he was set at the western edge of the world to hold up the sky.