Gigantomachy
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In Greek mythology, Gigantomachy (from Greek: gigantomakhia, from gigas Giant and makhē battle) was the symbolic struggle between the cosmic order of the Olympians led by Zeus and the nether forces of Chaos led by the giant Alcyoneus.[1] Heracles fought on the side of Olympians, who defeated the Giants in accordance with Hera's prophecy that the gods' victory would not be accomplished without the participation of the son of a mortal mother.[2] The leader of the Giants, Alcyoneus, could not be defeated in the Giants' home of Pallene, so Heracles picked him up and carried him out of Pallene in order to kill him. The attempt of the Giants Otus and Ephialtes to storm Olympus by piling Mount Ossa upon Mount Pelion is sometimes linked with the Gigantomachy by some, and treated as a separate attack upon the power of Zeus by others.
After the Titanomachy, the goddess Gaia, seeking revenge,[3] brought forth the Giants, telling them to "take arms against the great gods".[4] Hesiod describes them as "glittering in their armour, with long spears in their hands."[5]
The Gigantomachy became a popular theme from the early 7th century BC[6] (including the so-called Gigantomachy pediment on the Acropolis). A temple at Phanagoreia commemorated Aphrodite's victory over some Giants. She drove them into a cave, where Heracles slaughtered them. After the Greco-Persian Wars the representation of Gigantomachy symbolized the hostility between the Greeks and the Persians, with the Greeks figuring as the Olympians, and the Persians as Giants.
With the fashion for rationalized glosses on the archaic myths,[clarification needed] Claudian, who composed a Gigantomachia, viewed Gigantomachy as a metaphor for catastrophic geomorphic change: "The puissant company of the giants confounds all differences between things; islands abandon the deep; mountains lie hidden in the sea. Many a river is left dry or has altered its ancient course....robbed of her mountains Earth sank into level plains, parted among her own sons." [7]
[edit] See also
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951:28-30; Gigantomachy: Sculpture & Vase Representations
- ^ Ps-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, 1.6.1.
- ^ The Giants are an "army of avengers" in Claudian's truncated Gigantomachia.
- ^ Ovidius, Fasti, 5.38.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony, 186.
- ^ Philip Mayerson. Classical mythology in literature, art, and music, Focus publishing, R. Pullins Company, 2001, p. 68
- ^ theoi Project: Gigantomachia text
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