Titans & primordials
The Titanomachy
ty-tan-OM-uh-kee
Also known as the War of the Titans, the Titan War
Ten years of war between the Titans and their own children, decided not by the gods but by the prisoners they let out.
Kronos ruled after unseating his father Ouranos, and took the same precaution against his own children by swallowing them at birth. Rhea hid the last one. Zeus grew up elsewhere, came back, and forced Kronos to bring the others up again — and the war started with five siblings who had spent their entire lives inside their father.
It lasted ten years and neither side could finish it. The Titans held Mount Othrys; the Olympians held Mount Olympus; the two mountains face each other across the Thessalian plain, which is the whole geography of the war. Hesiod describes the earth boiling and the sea roaring and nothing at all being decided.
What broke the deadlock was a prison break. Ouranos had shut his ugliest children — the three Cyclopes and the three Hundred-Handers — deep in Tartarus, and Kronos had left them there. Zeus went down, freed them, and fed them nectar and ambrosia. The Cyclopes were smiths: they made Zeus the thunderbolt, Poseidon the trident, and Hades the helm of darkness. The Hundred-Handers were artillery, throwing three hundred rocks at a time until the Titans broke.
The defeated Titans went into Tartarus behind bronze gates with the Hundred-Handers as guards — the prisoners promoted to wardens, which is the joke Hesiod is making. Atlas got a separate sentence. The three brothers then drew lots for the sky, the sea and the Underworld, and the result of that draw is the entire structure of Greek myth afterwards.
The moral is not subtle and the Greeks did not intend it to be. Both Ouranos and Kronos fell because of how they treated the children they were afraid of. Zeus won because he recruited the ones his family had thrown away.
Gods involved
The Titanomachy: common questions
How long did the Titanomachy last?
Ten years, according to Hesiod, with neither side able to force a decision until Zeus freed the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers from Tartarus.
Who won the Titan War, and how?
The Olympians — but the deciding move was recruitment rather than strength. Zeus released the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers, who had been imprisoned by Ouranos and left there by Kronos. The Cyclopes forged the thunderbolt, the trident and the helm of darkness; the Hundred-Handers threw three hundred rocks at a time.
What happened to the Titans afterwards?
Most were imprisoned in Tartarus behind bronze gates, guarded by the Hundred-Handers who had just fought beside Zeus. Atlas was sentenced separately to hold up the sky. Not every Titan was punished — those who stayed neutral or sided with Zeus, such as Prometheus at first, were left alone.
Which god is your parent?
Twelve questions and the campfire decides.
Related myths
- KronosThe Titan who overthrew his father, ate his own children to keep the throne, and lost it anyway.
- The TitansTwelve children of Earth and Sky who ruled before the Olympians, and whose name has been borrowed by almost everything large since.
- Mount OthrysThe Titans' seat, facing Olympus across the plain — a real mountain in Thessaly you can still climb, and the losing side's capital.
- TartarusThe pit beneath the Underworld — as far below Hades as the earth is below the sky.
- The CyclopesOne-eyed giants — smiths to the gods in one tradition, shepherds who eat sailors in the other.
- GaiaThe earth itself, first thing to exist with a shape, and the one power in Greek myth that has never yet lost.
- The Helm of DarknessThe helmet that makes its wearer unseeable — the least famous of the three great weapons, and arguably the most useful.
- The TridentPoseidon's three-pronged spear — a fishing tool scaled up until it could split the earth open.