Hecatoncheires
'Hundred-Handed Ones'), also called Hundred-Handers or Centimanes[1] (/ˈsɛntɪmeɪnz/; Latin: Centimani), were three monstrous giants, of enormous size and strength, each with fifty heads and one hundred arms.
In the standard tradition, they were the offspring of Uranus (Sky) and of Gaia (Earth), and helped Zeus and the Olympians to overthrow the Titans in the Titanomachy.
Although the Theogony describes the three brothers as having one hundred hands (ἑκατὸν μὲν χεῖρες),[13] the collective name Hecatoncheires (Ἑκατόγχειρες), i.e. the Hundred-Handers, is never used.
[14] The Theogony once refers to the brothers collectively as "the gods whom Zeus brought up from the dark",[15] otherwise it simply uses their individual names: Cottus, Briareus (or Obriareus) and Gyges.
[18] The Hundred-Handers, Cottus, Briareus and Gyges, were three monstrous giants, of enormous size and strength, with fifty heads and one hundred arms.
[21] According to the standard version of the succession myth, given in the accounts of Hesiod and Apollodorus, the Hundred-Handers, along with their brothers the Cyclopes, were imprisoned by their father Uranus.
[25] The lost epic poem the Titanomachy (see below), although probably written after Hesiod's Theogony,[26] perhaps preserved an older tradition in which the Hundred-Handers fought on the side of the Titans, rather than the Olympians.
It is told in the Iliad how, during a palace revolt by the Olympians Hera, Poseidon and Athena, who wished to chain Zeus, the sea goddess Thetis brought to Olympus: him of the hundred hands [ἑκατόγχειρον], whom the gods call Briareus, but all men Aegaeon; for he is mightier than his father.
While in Hesiod and Homer, the powerful Hundred-Hander Briareus was a faithful and rewarded ally of Zeus, the Titanomachy seems to have reflected a different tradition.
[35] Apollonius of Rhodes mentions the "great tomb of Aegaeon", seen by the Argonauts when "they were passing within sight of the mouth of the Rhyndacus ... a short distance beyond Phrygia".
[41] Apparently, this was made explicit by the fifth-century BC poet Ion of Chios, who referring to the Homeric story of the Olympians' revolt against Zeus, said that Aegaeon was the son of Thalassa (Sea) and that Thetis "summoned him from the Ocean".
[65] The third-century BC poet Callimachus, apparently confusing Briareus as one of the Giants, says he was buried under Mount Etna in Sicily, making his shift from one shoulder to the other, the cause of earthquakes.
[67] According to an Oxyrhynchus papyrus, “the first to use metal armour was Briareos, whilst previously men protected their bodies with animal skins.”[68] These stories are perhaps connected to a myth which may have made Briareus, like the Olympian god Hephaestus, a subterranean smith, who used the fires of Mount Etna as a forge for metalworking.
As the Theogony describes it: Then from Earth and Sky came forth three more sons, great and strong, unspeakable, Cottus and Briareus and Gyges, presumptuous children.
[76] As the Theogony describes it, Uranus bound the Hundred-Handers ... with a mighty bond, for he was indignant at their defiant manhood and their form and size; and he settled them under the broad-pathed earth.
It is by your prudent plans that we have once again come back out from under the murky gloom, from implacable bonds—something, Lord, Cronus’ son, that we no longer hoped to experience.
For that reason, with ardent thought and eager spirit we in turn shall now rescue your supremacy in the dread battle-strife, fighting against the Titans in mighty combats.
[88] However, later in the poem, we are told that Cottus and Gyges "live in mansions upon the foundations of Ocean", while Briareus, "since he was good" became the son-in-law of Poseidon, who gave him "Cymopoliea his daughter to wed".
[97] According to the same scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes mentioned above, the fifth-century BC poet Ion of Chios said that Aegaeon (who Thetis summoned in the Iliad to aid Zeus),[98] lived in the sea and was the son of Thalassa.
Virgil locates Briareus, as in Hesiod, in the underworld, where the Hundred-Hander dwells among "strange prodigies of bestial kind", which include the Centaurs, Scylla, the Lernaean Hydra, the Chimaera, the Gorgons, the Harpies, and Geryon.
In his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes Aegaeon (the Iliad's Briareus) as a "dark-hued" sea god "whose strong arms can overpower huge whales".
[106] In both of these poems, Ovid appears to be following the same tradition as in the lost Titanomachy, where Aegaeon was the sea god son of Pontus and a Titan ally.
[107] Ovid mentions "Gyas of the hundred hands" in his Amores, when "Earth made her ill attempt at vengeance, and steep Ossa, with shelving Pelion on its back, was piled upon Olympus.
"[108] In his Fasti, Ovid has Ceres (Demeter), complaining about the abduction of her daughter, say: "What worse wrong could I have suffered if Gyges had been victorious and I his captive.
"[109] In both of these poems, Ovid has apparently confused the hundred-handers with the Giants (a different set of monstrous offspring of Gaia) who tried to storm Olympus in the Gigantomachy.
[116] When the Titans overthrew Uranus, they freed the Hundred-Handers and Cyclopes (unlike in Hesiod where they remain imprisoned), and made Cronus their sovereign.
[118] As in Hesiod's account, Cronus swallowed his children; but Zeus, who was saved by Rhea, freed his siblings, and together they waged war against the Titans.
"[123] According to the second-century AD geographer Pausanias, a Corinthian legend said that Briareus was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios (Sun) over some land.
[125] The fifth-century AD Greek poet Nonnus, in his Dionysiaca, mentions Briareus with his "ready hands" and Aegaeon as the "protector of [Zeus'] laws.
"[126] Briareus is mentioned twice in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy (completed 1320); he is first found as a giant inhabiting the Ninth Circle of Hell[127] and then again as an example of pride, carved into the pavement of the first terrace of Purgatory.
