Enceladus (Giant)

[2] Enceladus was one of the Giants, who (according to Hesiod) were the offspring of Gaia, born from the blood that fell when Uranus was castrated by their son Cronus.

[5] A Giant named Enceladus, fighting Athena, is attested in art as early as an Attic black-figure pot dating from the second quarter of the sixth century BC (Louvre E732).

[8] In Euripides' comic satyr play Cyclops, Silenus, the drunken companion of the wine god Dionysus, boasts of having killed Enceladus with his spear.

The fifth-century Greek poet Nonnus, in his poem Dionysiaca, mentions Enceladus as one of the several Giants that Dionysus battles in the Gigantomachy.

So, for example Virgil:Enceladus, his body lightning-scarred, lies prisoned under all, so runs the tale: o'er him gigantic Aetna breathes in fire from crack and seam; and if he haply turn to change his wearied side, Trinacria's isle trembles and moans, and thick fumes mantle heaven.

Whene’er his rebellious shoulders shift their burden to the right or left, the island is shaken from its foundations and the walls of tottering cities sway this way and that.The battle between Athena and Enceladus was a popular theme in Greek vase paintings,[25] with examples from as early as the middle of the sixth century BC.

[26] From the description given in Euripides' Ion, the battle was apparently depicted on the late sixth-century BC Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Its south pole is interspersed with massive geysers of ice and water vapor that shoot hundreds of miles from its interior.