Curated playlist
Titans (mythology)
- CoeusLatona, that Titaness whom Coeus sired, whoever he may be. Ovid in Metamorphoses VI.185 poses this question about a figure who played no active part in Greek mythology. He appears only in lists of Titans such as Hesiod's Theogony 133 or…
- Phoebe (Titaness)Phoebe carries an epithet in Hesiod's Theogony that rarely gets much attention: khrysostephanos, golden-crowned. It is one of the few vivid details attached to a Titan who mostly stays offstage in her own myths. She is one of the Titans,…
- TitanomachyThe Titanomachy was a ten-year war fought in ancient Thessaly to decide who would rule the cosmos. The older gods, the Titans, held Mount Othrys; the younger Olympians would come to hold Mount Olympus. Among the forces involved were giants…
- TheiaTheia is the Greek goddess from whom all light was said to proceed, and yet she barely speaks a line in the myths that survive. Pindar called her "Theia of many names," and the names pile up: Thea, Thia, Euryphaessa, Aethra, Basileia. She…
- Rhea (mythology)Rhea handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he swallowed it whole. The ruler of the cosmos had just been deceived by his own wife. The infant he believed he had consumed was already hidden in a cave on the island of Crete.…
- CronusCronus, leader of the Titans and ruler of the mythological Golden Age, was the deity Greeks credited with bringing the harvest and feared for devouring his own children. He overthrew his father Uranus by castrating him with a stone sickle,…
- ThemisThemis, the Greek goddess of divine law, had a name the scholar Moses Finley called "untranslatable." Writing about Homer's use of the word in the 8th century BCE, Finley found it could mean "right custom, proper procedure, social order."…
- EosEos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, rose every morning from the edge of the river Oceanus and scattered light across the sky before her brother Helios, the sun god, could begin his own journey. She is rosy-fingered, saffron-robed,…
- Tethys (mythology)In the ancient Greek cosmos, Tethys emerged as one of the Titans, the children born from the union of Uranus and Gaia. Hesiod lists her among twelve siblings including Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis,…
- CriusAncient Greek speakers used the word krios to describe a ram. The same syllables also formed kreios, which meant a type of mussel in that language. Scholars cannot agree on which meaning applies to this Titan. Some sources point to the…
- HeliosHelios, the Greek god who personifies the Sun, is invoked in one ancient ritual text with remarkable vividness: "a youth, fair to behold, with fiery hair, clothed in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak and wearing a fiery crown." The same…
- OceanusOceanus once heard himself mocked by his own kin: "How did you summon courage to quit the stream that bears your name and the rock-roofed caves you yourself have made...?" Ancient Greek storytellers made Oceanus a Titan, child of Uranus,…
- MnemosyneMnemosyne was a Titaness in Greek mythology, and her name comes directly from the Greek word mnēmē, meaning remembrance or memory. That word did more work than most divine names ever have to. So why does a Titan, a category of god that…
- PrometheusPrometheus is a Titan from Greek mythology whose name may mean "forethought" -- and whose story has never stopped being told. He defied the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and delivering it to humanity in the form of technology,…