In Greek mythology, the Aloadae (/ˌæloʊˈeɪdiː/) or Aloads (Ancient Greek: Ἀλωάδαι Aloadai) were Otus or Otos (Ὦτος means "insatiate") and Ephialtes (Ἐφιάλτης "nightmare"),[1] Thessalian sons of Princess Iphimedia, wife of Aloeus, by Poseidon,[2] whom she induced to make her pregnant by going to the seashore and disporting herself in the surf or scooping seawater into her bosom.

[9] Homer says that the Aloadae were killed by Apollo before they had any beards,[10] consistent with their being bound to columns in the Underworld by snakes, with the nymph of the Styx in the form of an owl over them.

According to another version of their struggle against the Olympians, alluded to so briefly[12][13] that it must have been already familiar to the epic's hearers, they managed to kidnap Ares and hold him in a bronze jar, a storage pithos, for thirteen months (a lunar year).

"And that would have been the end of Ares and his appetite for war, if the beautiful Eriboea, the young giants' stepmother, had not told Hermes what they had done", Dione related.

[20] According to Diodorus, the Aloadae are Thessalian heroes who were sent out by their father Aloeus to fetch back their mother Iphimedeia and their sister Pancratis, who had been carried off by Thracians.

In the Inferno of Dante's Divine Comedy Ephialtes is one of six giants placed in the great pit that separates the eighth and ninth circles of Hell, Fraud and Cocytus, respectively.