• OVERVIEW
    They were children of the Titans Uranus and Gaea; they were three, Briareus or Aegaeon (the vigorous or the sea goat), Cottus (the striker or the furious) and Gyges (the big-limbed). The natural forces that were represented by the Hecatoncheires were the earthquakes and the huge sea waves.

    Uranus, their father, threw them into Gaea's womb, which infuriated her; thus, this started her plotting towards the overthrow of her husband. She helped her son Cronus defeat his father, but when he came into power, he also imprisoned them in Tartarus.
    Hecatoncheires in Titanomachy

    During the Titanomachy, the War between the Titans and the Olympians, Gaea sided with Zeus and told him to free the Cyclopes as they would be worthy allies; thanks to their help, the Titans were overthrown and Zeus made them the guards of Tartarus.

    ETYMOLOGY
    The name “Hecatoncheires” (singular “Hecatoncheir”) is derived from the Greek words hekaton (“one hundred”) and cheir (“hand” or “arm”). However, the earliest sources to describe the Hecatoncheires never referred to them collectively by this term, instead using their individual names.The name of the first of the Hecatoncheires, Cottus, was a common name in Thrace, a region north of Greece known for its harsh winters and warlike tribes. It may be related to the name of the Thracian goddess Cotys.

    The second of the Hecatoncheires had two names: Briareus and Aegaeon. Homer’s Iliad explains the two names by saying that Briareus was the name used by the gods and Aegaeon the one used by mortals.o make matters even more confusing, however, the poet Hesiod never calls him Aegaeon but uses both Briareus and Obriareus.The first of these names, Briareus (or Obriareus), may derive from the Greek briaros, meaning “strong” or “fierce”;[3] according to Martin West, the o- in “Obriareus” is simply an old prepositional affix.

    Other scholars, however, have argued that the name Briareus/Obriareus is pre-Greek. The first part of the second name, Aegaeon, is the root aeg- or aig-, which is found in many Greek words associated with the sea, including aigialos (“shore”) and aiges or aigades (“waves”). This could suggest an association with the Aegean Sea, the city of Aegae, or even the god Poseidon (who was sometimes called Aegaeon).

    The name of the last of the Hecatoncheires is Gyges or, in some texts, Gyes. Martin West has argued that the name “Gyges” is the more correct form, possibly related to the name of the mythical Attic king Ogyges. The alternative “Gyes” perhaps came about from an association with the Greek work gyion, meaning “limb” (so that “Gyes” would designate “one strong in his limbs”).

    THEIR STORY
    The Hecatoncheires’ tale is one of shifting power dynamics. It’s one of the greatest stories in Greek Mythology, as it involves the succession of deities through time. The most common version of this story comes from Hesiod’s “Theogony.” As mentioned earlier, the Hecatoncheires were imprisoned alongside the 12 Titans and the rest of Uranus’ and Gaia’s children. There, they were guarded by a great dragon called Campe.

    Hesiod went into great detail describing the horror Uranus saw upon their birth. A hundred arms springing from their shoulder made them unapproachable, and the mighty strength of their forms was immense!

    Despite Cronus’ victory, the Hecatoncheires (and the Cyclopes) remained in their prison beneath the earth and were only freed once Cronus’ son Zeus rose up against the Titans. According to Hesiod, the war between Zeus and the Titans—the Titanomachy—had already been raging for ten years when Gaia told Zeus that he would only win with the help of the imprisoned Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes. 

    Zeus heeded Gaia’s advice and immediately freed the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes. In gratitude, they agreed to help him in his war against the Titans. The Cyclopes fashioned a mighty lightning bolt and gave it to Zeus to be his weapon. The Hecatoncheires, meanwhile, took up arms and made quick work of the Titans. Hesiod gives a powerful rendition of the scene in his Theogony:

    And amongst the foremost Cottus and Briareos and Gyes insatiate for war raised fierce fighting: three hundred rocks, one upon another, they launched from their strong hands and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and hurled them beneath the wide-pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains when they had conquered them by their strength for all their great spirit, as far beneath the earth as heaven is above earth; for so far is it from earth to Tartarus.

    The Hecatoncheires thus proved instrumental in helping Zeus win the Titanomachy. Afterwards, Zeus became the ruler of the cosmos. Together with his siblings, he went to live on Mount Olympus, from which the new order of gods derived its name: the Olympians.

    What happened to the Hecatoncheires after that is obscure. Hesiod says that they went to live at “Ocean’s foundations.” But Apollodorus writes that the Hecatoncheires stood guard over the Titans imprisoned in Tartarus.


    BRIAREUS
    The only one of the Hecatoncheires who had an independent mythology is Briareus. According to a story known only from Homer’s Iliad, Briareus once came to Zeus’ rescue when the other Olympians tried to overthrow him. Bound and helpless, Zeus would have been supplanted as ruler of the cosmos, but the sea goddess Thetis enlisted Briareus’ help (who, as Homer obscurely notes, was also called Aegaeon by mortals). With his hundred arms, Briareus easily freed Zeus from his bonds; Zeus then immediately sprang up, grabbed his thunderbolt, and, with Briareus at his side, forced the gods back into line.

    There is another obscure myth involving Briareus. It tells of how the sea god Poseidon and the sun god Helios got into a dispute over some land in Corinth. Briareus was brought in as an arbitrator and ruled that the hilltop site of the city, the Acrocorinth, belonged to Helios, while the surrounding land, the Isthmus, belonged to Poseidon.

    Other sources claimed that Briareus lived (or was imprisoned) under Mount Etna in Sicily, and that he caused an earthquake every time he shifted his weight or moved his many arms.

    There is yet another tradition, preserved only on a single scrap of papyrus, according to which Briareus was the inventor of armor.