gigantes
 See gigantes y cabezudos for the giant figures of Spanish culture.
In Greek mythology, the Gigantes (Γίγαντες; singular Gigas) or, commonly, Giants, were a race of giants, children of Gaia or Gaea, who was fertilized by the blood of Ouranos when Cronus castrated him.[A parallel to the Gigantes' birth is the birth of Aphrodite from the similarly fertilized sea.]
Gaea, incensed by the imprisonment of the Titans in Tartarus by the Olympians, incited the Gigantes to rise up in arms against them, end their reign, and restore the Titans' rule. They tested the strength of the Olympians in what is known as the Gigantomachia or Gigantomachy. Led on by Alcyoneus and Porphyrion, the Olympians called upon the aid of Heracles after a prophecy warned them that he was required to defeat the Gigantes. Heracles slew not only Alcyoneus, but dealt the death blow to the Gigantes who had been wounded by the Olympians. The Gigantes Otus and Ephialtes hoped to reach the top of Mount Olympus by stacking the mountain ranges of Thessaly, Pelion, and Ossa on top of each other.
"Power is latent violence, which must have been manifested at least in some mythological once-upon-a-time. 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). In the Gigantomachia, however, the Olympians were already in power when the Gigantes rose to challenge them. 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. Later Hellenistic poets and Latin ones tended to blur Titans and Giants.[In a surviving fragment of Naevius' poem on the Punic war, he describes the Gigantes Runcus and Purpureus (Porphyrion):]
Inerant signa expressa, quo modo Titani
bicorpores Gigantes, magnique Atlantes
Runcus ac Purpureus filii Terras.
Eduard Fraenkel remarks of these lines, with their highly unusual plural Atlantes, "It does not surprise us to find the names Titani and Gigantes employed indiscriminately to denote the same mythological creatures, for we are used to the identification, or confusion, of these two types of monsters which, though not original, had probably become fairly common by the time of Naevius". (Fraenkel, "The Giants in the Poem of Naevius" The Journal of Roman Studies 44 (1954, pp. 14-17) p. 15 and note.
According to the Greeks of southern Italy, the Gigantes were buried by the gods beneath the earth, where their writhing caused volcanic activity and earthquakes.
In iconic representations the Gigantomachy was a favorite theme of the Greek vase-painters of the fifth century (illustration above right). The Gigantes were depicted as either hoplite warriors dressed in armour and wielding spears or as primitives wearing panther skins armed with rocks and flaming torches. In sculpture and mosaic they were usually shown with the tails of serpents for legs. More impressive depictions of the Gigantomachy can be found in classical sculptural relief, such as the great altar of Pergamon, where the serpent-tailed giants are locked in battle with a host of gods, or in Antiquity at the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Acragas.[A repertory of the theme in Greek arts is offered in Francis Vian, Répertoire des gigantomachie figurées (Paris) 1951 and his La Guerre des Géants (Paris) 1952.]
The Gigantes identified by individual names were Alcyoneus slain by Heracles, Porphyrion wounded by Zeus with lightning bolts and finished off by Heracles, Enceladus and Pallas killed by Athena, Polybotes crushed by Poseidon beneath the island of Nisyros, Hippolytus slain by Hermes with his sword and wearing the cap of invisibility, Ephialtes of the Aloadae shot by Apollo with arrows, Gration slain by the goddess Artemis with her arrows, Eurytos slain by Dionysos with his pine-cone tipped thyrsos, Agrios and Thoon clubbed to death by the Moirae with clubs of bronze, Mimas slain by Hephaestus with bolts of metal and Clytius by Hecate with flaming torches.
See also
Pergamon Altar
Sources
The Gigantes in Classical Literature and Art
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion (1977) 1985.
Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities - "Gigantes"
Theoi Project - Gigantes
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