Hecatoncheires

Etching by Tommaso Piroli after a drawing of John Flaxman.

The Hecatonchir Briareos used as an allegory of the multiple threat of labour unrest to Capital in a political cartoon, 1890.

The Hekatonkheires or Hecatonchires (stress on the fourth syllable; singular: "Hekatonkheir" or "Hecatonchir" /ˈhɛkəˌtɒŋkər/; Greek: Ἑκατόγχειρες, "hundred-handed ones"), also called the Centimanes /ˈsɛntˌmeɪnz/ (Latin: Centimani) or Hundred-handers, were figures in an archaic stage of Greek mythology, three giants of incredible strength and ferocity that surpassed all of the Titans, whom they helped overthrow. Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν (hekaton; "hundred") and χείρ (kheir; "hand"), "each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads" (Bibliotheca). Hesiod's Theogony (624, 639, 714, 734–35) reports that the three Hekatonkheires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus.

In Virgil's Aeneid (10.566–67), in which Aeneas is likened to one of them (Briareos, known here as Aegaeon), they fought on the side of the Titans rather than the Olympians; in this, Virgil was following the lost Corinthian epic Titanomachy rather than the more familiar account in Hesiod.

Other accounts make Briareos (or Aegaeon) one of the assailants of Olympus. After his defeat, he was buried under Mount Aetna (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, 141).

Mythology

Hesiod

According to Hesiod, the Hekatonkheires were children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (sky). They were thus part of the very beginning of things (Kerenyi 1951:19) in the submerged prehistory of Greek myth, though they played no known part in cult. They were:

• Briareos /braɪˈɛri.ɒs/ (Βριάρεως) the Vigorous, also called Aegaeon /ˈdʒiːən/ (Αἰγαίων), the "sea goat"; often misspelt "Briareus" as if from a Greek *Βριαρεύς, *Βριάρειος, or *Βριάραιος
• Cottus /ˈkɒtəs/ (Κόττος) the Striker or the Furious
• Gyges /ˈdʒaɪdʒiːz/ (Γύγης) or Gyes /ˈdʒaɪiːz/ (Γύης) the Big-Limbed

If some natural phenomena are symbolised by the Hekatonkheires then they may represent the gigantic forces of nature that appear in earthquakes and other convulsions or in the motion of sea waves (Mayer, Die Giganten und Titanen, 1887).

Soon after they were born, their father Uranus threw them into the depths of Tartarus because he saw them as hideous monsters. In some versions, Uranus saw how ugly the Hekatonkheires were at their birth and pushed them back into Gaia's womb, upsetting Gaia greatly, causing her great pain and setting into motion the overthrow of Uranus by Cronus, who later imprisoned them in Tartarus.

The Hekatonkheires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Gaia that they would serve as good allies against Cronus and the Titans. During the War of the Titans, the Hekatonkheires threw rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, at the Titans, overwhelming them. After the War of the Titans, the Hekatonkheires became the guards of Tartarus.

Pausanias

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias (Description of Greece ii. 1.6 and 4.7), Briareos was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between sea and sun: he adjudged the Isthmus of Corinth to belong to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) sacred to Helios.

Others

Scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes (i. 1165) represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontus, the Sea, ruling the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships. In Ovid's Metamorphoses (ii. 10) and in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana (iv. 6) he is a marine deity. Hesiod reconciles the archaic Hekatonkheires with the Olympian pantheon by making Briareos the son-in-law of Poseidon, who gave him "Kymopoliea his daughter to wed." (Theogony 817).

In popular culture

• In Gargantua and Pantagruel it is mentioned that a waiter needs as many hands as "Briareus".
• Briareos is mentioned in the Divine Comedy poem Inferno as one of the Giants in the Ninth Circle of Hell (Inferno XXXI.99).
• The giant is also mentioned in Cervantes' Don Quixote, in the famous episode of the windmills.
• The roleplaying game Exalted features hekatonkhires as the congealed nightmares of the slain Primordials.
• In the Epic Level Handbook for the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the Hekatonkheires are ancient creatures from before the shapes of races were set. Like in the original mythology, they were sealed away and are only released when gods intend to overthrow other gods. Each time they are released, they succeed in their task.
• Briareos is mentioned in Book I of John Milton's Paradise Lost alongside Typhon as an analogue to the fallen Satan.
• Briareos (misspelt as "Briareus") is mentioned in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, in a conversation between Tom Jones and Mr. Partridge (Book 8, Chapter IX).
• In Don Juan (Canto VI), Byron makes a slightly crude joke, musing whether "enviable Briareus ... with thy hands and heads ... hads't all things multiplied in proportion" (this thought arising from Byron's assertion of his love of all womankind in the previous canto).
• Briareos Hecatonchires is also a character in the anime and manga Appleseed, where he plays a human who has been transformed into a Hecatoncheir cyborg body, which also allows him to remotely control 100 systems. This is one of the many references to Greek mythology in the series, including Cottus (another cyborg) and Gyges (the brand name of a robot-shaped vehicle).
• Briares appears in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians novel The Battle of the Labyrinth. He was imprisoned in a part of the Labyrinth that corresponds to Alcatraz and again guarded by Kampe. His brothers had faded when no one remembered them, causing him to give up hope and refuse the chance to escape his prison. He eventually overcomes his despair and fights against the Titans again after helping to defeat Kampe. Briares fought in the First Titan War, and recalls it in The Battle of the Labyrinth.
• In the Outlaw Star episode "Gravity Jailbreak", Hecatoncheir is the name of the planet home to a high gravity prison which Gene Starwind must escape from.
• In the Ghost in the Shell episode "Decoy", many-handed robots were referenced by Ishikawa using the name "Hecatoncheires". However, in the original Japanese, it is heputonkeiru ("heptoncheires"), meaning "seven hands".
• In Dan Simmons' Olympos, the god Hephaestos tells Achilles that the monster Setebos was called "Briareos" by the Olympian gods and "Aegaeon" by the early humans.
• In The Rise of Endymion by the same author, two of the Technocore's android assassins are given the names of Gyges and Briareus.
• Composer Iannis Xenakis has a cello solo-piece entitled Kottos (1977).
• In the video game Final Fantasy XIII, Hecatoncheir is the Eidolon (summon) of the character Vanille.
• In both video games Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation and Ace Combat Infinity, the Heavy Command Cruiser and its escorts are named Aegaeon, Kottos and Gyges for the Hekatonkheires of the same names.
• In the God of War comic series, Gyges appears as the final enemy who was trying to revive his brothers Briareos and Cottus using the Ambrosia of Asclepius. He is killed by the protagonist Kratos.
• In God of War: Ascension, the Hecatoncheir Aegaeon (which was an alias of Briareos) is transformed into the giant Prison of the Damned by the Furies after he broke his oath to Zeus as mentioned in the game's intro. Magaera used her parasites to control the parts of Aegaeon. He is slain by Kratos, ending his suffering.
• In the PlayStation 2 video game Rygar: The Legendary Adventure, Hekatonchieres is the first boss fight players encounter, though the boss itself does not match the traditional description. Instead, it is a stone statue of a soldier, a horse, and a typical bearded god-like figure fused as one.
• In the video game Age of Mythology: The Titans, there is a unit called Heka Gigantes referencing the Hekatonkheires. However, the Heka Gigantes of the game has only one head and four arms.
• In the PlayStation 2 video game Persona 3: FES, players can attain Hecatoncheires as a Persona of the Hanged Man Arcana.
• In the Magic: The Gathering expansion Theros, based on Greek mythology, there is a card named Hundred-Handed One, a reference to Hekatonkheires.
• In Akame ga Kill!, the name of Seryu Ubiquitous' Imperial Relic is Hekatonkheires.
• In Monday Begins on Saturday, the Hekatonkheires are normally kept in a reinforced cave behind iron bars. They are stated to be clumsy enough to break or dislocate a finger while picking a nose.
• In the Fear saga by Stephen Moss, Hekaton is Earth's new moon. It is an asteroid pulled into Earth's orbit to function as a source of materials to build battleships against Man's interstellar foe, the Mobiliei.
• In DC Comics comic book Injustice: Gods Among Us (Year Four) appear a monster called Hecatonchire.

See also

• Asura
• Greek mythology in popular culture

References

• Hesiod's Theogony, 147ff.
• Bibliotheca I.1.1
• Ovid, Fasti iv.593
• Horace Carminae II.17.14, III.4.69
• Karl Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hudson, 1951.
• Theoi Project - Briareos