Titans

ti'tanz, in Greek mythology, a race of gods, children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). According to the poets, there were six male titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Japetus, and Cronus; and six females: Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. Instigated by their mother, they deposed their father and set Cronus in his place. To do this they released the hundred-handed giants and the cyclops from Tartarus where Uranus had confined them. When Cronus came to power, he again imprisoned the giants and the cyclops. Later Zeus, the son of Cronus, caused his father to disgorge the children he had swallowed at birth, and led them against his father. After a terrible war of ten years Cronus was dethroned. Zeus was obliged also to summon the prisoners from Tartarus before he could win the victory. From the cyclops he received the lightning which Minerva had invented and taught them to make. The triumphant Zeus, like his predecessors, did not care to have hundred-handed giants and "round-eyed" monsters roaming freely in his domain. He therefore shut them up again in Tartarus, where the cyclops work at the forge of Hephaestus. The titans during their wars were said to have tried to scale heaven by piling mountain upon mountain. They took up Mount Ossa and piled it upon Mount Pelion, whence the proverbial expression, "to pile Ossa upon Pelion." It is thought that Milton drew his notions of Satan's rebellion from the story of the Titan's War. The descendants of the titans, Prometheus, Helios, and Silene, are also called titans. In general, a titan is regarded as a giant, the embodiment of lawless strength. See Cronus; Zeus; Cyclops