Titans

“ Hear me, bright children of Earth and Heaven, that I may say what my heart within me bids. A long while now have we, who are sprung from Cronos and the Titan gods, fought with each other every day to get victory and to prevail. But do you show your great might and unconquerable strength, and face the Titans in bitter strife ”

“ The marks of the unending warfare of centuries lay in the reefs and outlying fragments of rock that chafed the waters as they flowed. It was indeed a conflict of Titans, whose chief ally and source of power was Time. Round great headlands we swept that mocked and baffled the high-flashing onslaught of the immortal enemy. How many generations of men had wailed into life, grown, fought tooth and nail, and lapsed into the grave, since these browbeaten cliffs had begun to outface the passions of their restless foe! ”

“ To heighten the turmoil, the winds and elements fight on the side of Zeus. The tide of battle turns. Jove's huge auxiliaries overwhelm the Titans with a succession of great missiles, send them sheer beneath the earth, and consign them to a durance "as far beneath, under earth, as heaven is from earth, for equal is the space from earth to murky Tartarus." ”

“ A savage scene lay at our feet on every side in the glaring light. The chain of rocks, bare and clear in their desolate barrenness to their remotest passes, stretched away like a mass of gigantic and monstrous relics, left for the amazement of mankind as traces of some primeval battle of the Titans. ”

“ Much of the detail of this Titan prison belongs as little to his British mountain experience as do the Titans themselves. Iapetus grasps a strangled serpent; Asia, dreaming of palm-shaded temples and sacred isles, leans upon an elephant tusk. We are conscious of no discord, so pervading is the impress of a single potent imagination, whatever the material it employs. ”

“ They are commonly in bold relief against the dark water—yet themselves show dark, edged by the white foam, where the water, sloping insinuatingly, falls and rushes by them. Here and there, in some deep-shaded, wild, lonely places, they are of gigantic size, and look like huge Titans turned to stone, amid the fragments that had hurled them down. The sketcher may easily imagine himself in the territory of magic. ”

“ Downward sinks the pit, twice as deep as the heavens are high. In it groan the Titans, hurled down with thunderbolts, and the giants, Otus and Ephialtes, who strove to overturn the throne of Jupiter himself. There lies Tityus, o'er nine roods outstretched, and eternally does a vulture tear his liver with her beak. Over some hangs a rock threatening ever to fall; before others a bounteous banquet is continually spread, but the hands that they stretch to take the food are evermore struck back by the Furies. Some roll a huge stone, others are bound to the revolving wheel. ”

“ Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds,
Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces
In which to make the fetters of the world.
Seared by the lightning of the younger gods,
They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills,
Those levins thrust like spears into the heart
Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky [90]
Like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched,
The night rose like a black, enormous mist
Around them, wherein naught was visible
Save the sharp levin leaping in the north ”

“ Wit's Titans.—The Titans, in Greek mythology, were the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (earth) , and of gigantic size. They engaged in a conflict with Zeus, the king of heaven, which lasted ten years. They were completely defeated, and hurled down into a dungeon below Tartarus. Very often they are confounded with the Giants, as has apparently been done here by Pope. These were a later progeny of the same parents, and in revenge for what had been done to the Titans, conspired to dethrone Zeus. ”

“ The mountains, which the Titans were fabled to have heaped up in their war against Jupiter, must have excited even in the most devout believers of Grecian mythology, emotions far less ardent and immediate, than the sight of the humbler cliffs, at which the small Spartan host, and their gallant leader, devoted themselves in the defensive war against the Persian invader. The races of men may perish, but the remembrance of them still lives imperishable, and seems to claim kindred with us, as often as we tread the same soil, or merely think of those who have trod it. ”

“ Out of his skull they made the firmament, and the spilling of the blood of his body caused a great flood, which, as it settled in the hollows of the earth, made up the sea.
Some of the children of Earth and Heaven were born bright beings or gods, who mostly loved the light and the upper air; and some were Giants or Titans, who were of a darker and gloomier hue. These latter hated the gods, and the gods hated them. The daring son of Earth who began the mutilation of the world-giant was one of the Titans, and he became their king ”

“ Titans, in the Greek mythology sons of Uranos and Gaia, beings of gigantic strength, and of the dynasty prior to that of Zeus, who made war on Zeus, and hoped to scale heaven by piling mountain on mountain, but were overpowered by the thunderbolts of Zeus, and consigned to a limbo below the lowest depths of Tartarus; they represent the primitive powers of nature, as with seeming reluctance submissive to the world-order established by Zeus, and symbolise the vain efforts of mere strength to subvert the ordinance of heaven ”

“ The wars of the Titans against the gods are very celebrated in mythology. They are often confounded with that of the giants; but it is to be observed, that the war of the Titans was against Saturn, and that of the giants against Jupiter. Hesiod, Theogony, li. 135, &c.—Apollodorus, bk. 1, ch. 1.—Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound.—Callimachus, Hymn to Delos, li. 17.—Diodorus, bk. 1.—Hyginus, preface to fables.
Titānia, a patronymic applied to Pyrrha, as granddaughter of Titan, and likewise to Diana. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 1, li. 395; bk. ”

“ In melancholy realms big tears are shed,
More sorrow like to this, and such like woe,
Too huge for mortal tongue or pen of scribe.
The Titans fierce, self-hid or prison-bound,10
Groan for the old allegiance once more,
Listening in their doom for Saturn's voice.
But one of the whole eagle-brood still keeps
His sovereignty, and rule, and majesty:
Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire
Still sits, still snuffs the incense teeming up
From Man to the Sun's God—yet insecure.
For as upon the earth dire prodigies
Fright and perplex, so also shudders he ”

“ These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs ”

“ A similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by young Apollo, the god of light and song. ”

“ The Titans, Τιτανες, were properly Titanians; a people so denominated from their worship, and from the places where it was celebrated. They are, like Orion and the Cyclopians, represented as gigantic persons: and they were of the same race, the children of Anak. The Titanian temples were stately edifices, erected in Chaldea, as well as in lower Egypt, upon mounds of earth, λοφοι μαστοειδεις, and sacred to Hanes; Τιτανις and Τιτανες are compounds of Tit-Hanes; and signify literally μαστος ἡλιου, the conical hill of Orus. ”

“ A giant race, a race of Titans, in time populated this newly-made earth, and of these one of the mightiest was Prometheus. To him, and to his brother Epimethus, was entrusted by Eros the distribution of the gifts of faculties and of instincts to all the living creatures in the world, and the task of making a creature lower than the gods, something less great than the Titans, yet in knowledge and in understanding infinitely higher than the beasts and birds and fishes. At the hands of the Titan brothers, birds, beasts, and fishes had fared handsomely. ”

“ The wicked Titans belong entirely to strictly Greek mythology.36 In this case, as the murderers of the god, they represent the primeval power of evil.37 They dismember the One into Many parts; by their impiety the One divine being is dispersed into the multiplicity of the things of this world.38 It is reborn as One in the new Dionysos sprung from Zeus. The Titans—so the legend goes on to relate—who had devoured the limbs of the god were destroyed by Zeus with his lightning flash. ”

“ We do, indeed, find in several Mithraea representations of a Titanomachia where the Titans, represented as men with serpent legs, are depicted as fleeing before a god like the Greek Zeus who strikes them with his thunderbolts [906] . But this is not more necessarily suggestive of two irreconcilable principles than the Greek story of the Titans, those sons of Earth who were persuaded by their mother to make war upon their father Uranos, who put their brother Kronos upon his throne, and who were in their turn hurled from heaven by Kronos’ son Zeus. ”

“ Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death.
Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice
Seeming the soul of that tremendous land
Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars.
"O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world,
Is this the end? Must Earth go down to Chaos,
Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed sway
Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth, [91]
Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance,
To bind their will as reins upon the sun,
Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens? ”

“ At the opening of the "Prometheus Unbound" the Titan was seen brought once more to light, after the lapse of ages, from the abyss into which he had been hurled at the conclusion of the "Prometheus Bound." He was still chained to the rock, with the additional torment of the eagle. which daily preyed upon his liver. The punishments of the Titans, like the Titanic powers themselves, represent the absence of rule or measure; the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law. ”

“ At the instigation of Gaea they rebelled against their father, who had shut them up in the bowels of the earth, and set up as ruler their youngest brother, Cronus, who in turn was dethroned by his son Zeus. A struggle then ensued between Zeus and Cronus, in which the Titans took different sides. The opponents of Zeus were finally defeated, and imprisoned in Tartarus (Theog. 153–210, 617 sqq.) . The rebellious Titans are the representatives of the wild, disorderly forces of nature, who are defeated by the Olympian deities, who stand for law and order. ”

“ For a very long time have [11] we been fighting for the mastery, the Titan gods and we who are sprung from Kronos. Now show your invincible might against the Titans, in gratitude for your deliverance to the light from bondage in murky gloom."
The blameless Cottus answered: "Excellent Lord, we are aware that thy wisdom is most high, and thy mind, and that thou hast been to the immortals an averter of destruction. Wherefore we will now protect thy dominion in fell conflict, fighting stoutly against the Titans."
And all the gods applauded, female as well as male, and they rushed to combat. ”

“ Ans. Titan was so much enraged against Saturn for failing to destroy all his male children, that he assembled the giants, generally called Titans, to avenge the injury. They overcame Saturn, and bound him with Ops, or Rhea, in hell. Jupiter conquered the Titans, and delivered his father and mother. He afterwards took up arms against Saturn himself, whom he overcame and banished. He then shared his power with his two brothers, Neptune and Pluto; to Neptune he gave the command of the seas and rivers, while Pluto received [Pg 25] for his portion the subterranean world, or infernal regions. ”

“ You will remember that in the myth of the rending of Dionysus by the Titans, these powers of evil were burned to ashes by the thunderbolt of Zeus. According to one version of the story man is formed from these ashes, which contain the element of the divine, taken in by the Titans when they devoured the god. Thus man is of a two-fold nature, his soul divine, Dionysiac, his body evil, Titanic. On an Orphic tablet found in a grave in southern Italy the soul declares: “I am a child of earth and the starry heaven, but my race is from heaven. ”

“ TITANS, powerful beings of Greek mythology, the children of Sky and Earth. According to Hesiod, the male Titans were Oceanus, Cœus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus; the female were Thea, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phœbe, and Tethys, to whom Apollodorus adds Dione. ”

“ Uranus, or Heaven, was the Day. Espousing his sister Titæa, from their union sprang the Titans, those giants of antiquity who occupy so important a position in the annals of Fable. Of these children of the earth the principal were Titan, Saturn, and Hyperion, of the males; whilst among the females were comprised Thea, Rhea, Themis, and Mnemosyne. After this Titæa bore the Cyclops, three of whom became servants to Vulcan, forging, under his direction, the thunderbolts of the great Jove; while the remainder wandered around the coast, leading the lives of shepherds. ”