Gigantes

In Greek mythology, the sons of Earth and Tartaros, with snake-like legs; their name means ‘the giants’. They made war on the Olympian gods, were defeated, and are buried under various volcanic islands. The Gigantomachy (‘war of the giants’) was the subject of large-scale sculpture, as at Pergamum. A sub-group, the Aloadae, piled Mt Pelion upon Mt Ossa.

In Greek mythology, the Gigantes were a race of giants, children of Gaia (the primordial Earth mother), who was fertilized by the blood of Uranus that resulted from his castration by Cronus.

The primordial Gigantes rose up in arms against the Olympians in an attempt to end the Olympian reign. The Olympians called upon the aid of Heracles after a prophecy warned them that he was required to defeat the Gigantes. Superiority is guaranteed only by defeated inferiors," Walter Burkert remarked of the Gigantomachy (Burkert p 128)

This battle parallels the Titanomachy, a fierce struggle between the upstart Olympians and their older predecessors, the Titans (who lost the battle). With the aid of their powerful weapons and Heracles, the Olympians defeated the Gigantes and quelled the rebellion, confirming their reign over the earth, sea, and heaven, and confining the Gigantes to the Netherworld.

Whether the Gigantomachia was interpreted in ancient times as a kind of indirect "revenge of the Titans" upon the Olympians — as the Gigantes' reign would have been in some fashion a restoration of the age of the Titans — is not attested in any of the few literary references.

According to the Greeks of southern Italy, the Gigantes were buried beneath the earth by the gods where their writhing caused volcanic and other thermal activity.

The most important of the Gigantes were Alcyoneus slain by Heracles, Porphyrion destroyed by Zeus with lightning bolts, Enceladus and Pallas killed by Athena, Polybotes crushed by Poseidon beneath Nisyros Island, Hippolytus by Hermes, Ephialtes of the Aloadae shot by Apollo with arrows, and Mimas by Hephaestus with bolts of metal and Clytius by Hecate with flaming torches.