Hecatoncheires, the Hundred-Handers of Greek mythology

The Hecatoncheires, or Hundred-Handers, are three primordial giants of Greek mythology: Cottus, Briareus and Gyes, sons of Uranus and Gaia. Hesiod gives each of them a hundred arms and fifty heads. Their father buried them underground; Zeus set them free, and in return they won the Titanomachy for him, burying the Titans under a storm of boulders before becoming their jailers in Tartarus. Their story is short, but without them Zeus would never have become king.

Who are the Hecatoncheires?

The Hundred-Handers are the third set of children born to Sky and Earth, alongside the twelve Titans and the three Cyclopes. In Hesiod they stand for raw strength and nothing else. They make nothing, rule nothing and hold no domain. What they have is power, and that power belongs to whoever chains them up or sets them loose.

The collective name Hekatoncheires, “hundred-handed”, is not Hesiod’s. He describes the hundred arms without giving the group a label. The adjective hekatoncheiros first appears in Homer, for Briareus alone, and the plural becomes standard with later mythographers such as Apollodorus. Roman writers called them the Centimani.

Three brothers, one famous name

Only Briareus has a story of his own. His name is usually traced to briarós, “strong”. Cottus is little more than a voice: Hesiod gives him a speech and nothing else. The third brother is Gyes in most editions of the Theogony, though some manuscripts and later sources spell him Gyges; both refer to the same figure. Hesiod also writes Obriareus at times, a metrical variant rather than a different name.

Born monstrous, buried alive

The Theogony lists their birth right after the Cyclopes (147-153). Earth and Sky have three more sons, “great and mighty, not to be named”: Cottus, Briareus and Gyes. A hundred unapproachable arms spring from their shoulders, fifty heads grow on each, and their strength is overwhelming.

The next lines (154-158) describe how their father reacts. Uranus hates his children “from the start” and hides them in the depths of Gaia, refusing to let them into the light. Earth groans, crammed with her own sons. That grievance leads her to hand a sickle to Cronus and have Uranus castrated, as told in the Greek creation myth.

Hesiod’s wording is ambiguous, and readers have long debated whether Uranus buries all his children or only the most fearsome ones, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. Later in the poem (617-620) he is clear about the three brothers at least: their father, resentful of “Obriareus, Cottus and Gyes” and jealous of their size and strength, bound them in harsh chains and settled them under the earth.

Apollodorus: imprisoned twice

Apollodorus’ Library (1.1.1-4) reorders the sequence. Here the Hundred-Handers are Uranus’ firstborn, ahead of the Cyclopes and Titans, whereas Hesiod puts them last. Uranus binds them and throws them into Tartarus. After the castration the Titans bring them back up and give power to Cronus, who promptly chains them again and sends them back down. This second imprisonment is unique to the mythographic tradition, and it explains why the brothers owe Cronus nothing and owe everything to whoever frees them.

Freed by Zeus

After ten years of deadlock between the Olympians and the Titans, Gaia tells Zeus how to win: bring the buried sons up into the light (Theogony 624-628). The gods do so and feed them nectar and ambrosia, the food of the immortals, to restore their spirit.

Zeus then makes a short speech. He reminds them that the Olympians freed them from bondage and darkness, and asks them to show their strength against the Titans. Cottus answers for all three (655-663): Zeus released them from their chains, and they will fight “with steadfast mind” for his rule. It is one of the few moments in the Theogony when a monster speaks, and what it says is thanks and a pledge of loyalty.

Apollodorus (1.2.1) makes the rescue more physical. Gaia prophesies victory if Zeus takes as allies those cast down into Tartarus. Zeus kills their jailer, the she-monster Campe, and loosens their bonds. In this version he frees the Cyclopes, who give him the thunderbolt, together with the Hundred-Handers.

How the Hundred-Handers won the Titanomachy

The battle scene in the Theogony builds to their attack. They take their stand against the Titans with huge rocks in their mighty hands (669-675). Zeus then joins the fight with his thunderbolt, setting earth, sea and sky ablaze.

Yet the Hundred-Handers are the ones who end the war (713-720). Cottus, Briareus and Gyes, never tired of fighting, throw three hundred boulders, volley after volley, until the missiles cast the Titans into shadow. They drive them beneath the earth and bind them in painful chains, as far below the earth as the sky is above it. Three brothers, a hundred hands each: the number fits.

Hesiod splits the credit carefully. The Cyclopes’ thunderbolt gives Zeus his terror and his prestige, but the Hundred-Handers’ sheer mass wins the battle. The future king of the gods triumphs because he wins over the forces his father and grandfather kept locked away.

Guards of Tartarus

Once the war is over, the Titans are shut in Tartarus behind bronze gates set there by Poseidon, with a wall running all around. There, Hesiod says (729-735), live Gyes, Cottus and great-hearted Obriareus, “trusty guards of aegis-bearing Zeus”. Apollodorus (1.2.1) agrees: the victors imprison the Titans in Tartarus and appoint the Hundred-Handers as their guards.

A second passage (815-819) adds a twist. Cottus and Gyes, “the glorious allies of Zeus”, live in houses on the foundations of Ocean. Briareus is singled out: Poseidon, the Earthshaker, makes him his son-in-law by giving him his daughter Cymopolea as a wife. The marriage ties Briareus to the sea and fits his other name, Aegaeon.

Briareus, also called Aegaeon

The rescue of Zeus in the Iliad

Homer mentions only one Hundred-Hander, but he gives him a striking role. In Iliad Book 1 (396-406), Achilles reminds his mother Thetis of the day Hera, Poseidon and Pallas Athena tried to put Zeus in chains. Thetis summoned the hundred-handed one to Olympus, “whom the gods call Briareus, and all men Aegaeon”. Stronger than his own father, he sat down beside Zeus, glorying in his might, and the frightened gods gave up their plot.

Two things are worth noting. Homer does not say who the father is that Briareus outmatches; ancient commentators wavered between Uranus and Poseidon, which would imply a different family tree. And no other early source tells this story. It casts the Hundred-Handers, once again, as the guarantors of Zeus’ power, this time against a revolt among the Olympians themselves.

Aegaeon on the Titans’ side

A rival tradition flips his loyalty. A scholium on Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica (at 1.1165, where the Argonauts sail past the “tomb of Aegaeon” in Mysia) reports that in the epic Titanomachy attributed to Eumelus of Corinth, Aegaeon was a son of Gaia and Pontus who lived in the sea and fought for the Titans. The poem is lost and the attribution uncertain, but the note shows that Hesiod’s version was not the only one in circulation.

Roman poets often took the darker line. In Aeneid 10.565-568, Virgil compares Aeneas on a killing spree to Aegaeon, who with a hundred arms and fifty fire-breathing mouths clashed as many shields against Jupiter’s thunderbolts. In Book 6 (287), “hundredfold Briareus” lurks among the monsters at the gates of the Underworld. Ovid (Metamorphoses 2.10) includes Aegaeon among the sea gods carved on the doors of the Sun’s palace.

Local legends: Corinth, Etna and the edge of the world

• Corinth. According to Pausanias (2.1.6), the Corinthians said Poseidon and Helios quarreled over their land, and Briareus, acting as arbiter, gave the Isthmus to Poseidon and the citadel heights, Acrocorinth, to Helios.
• Mount Etna. In the Hymn to Delos (141-147), Callimachus compares an earthquake to Etna shaking when Briareus, buried beneath it, rolls onto his other shoulder. The usual occupant of the volcano is Typhon or the Giant Enceladus.
• The Pillars of Briareus. Aelian (Varia Historia 5.3), drawing on a tradition he connects with Aristotle, says the Pillars of Heracles used to be called the Pillars of Briareus. The report stands alone and its exact source is uncertain.

Hundred-Handers, Cyclopes, Titans and Gigantes

Gaia’s monstrous sons are easy to mix up, especially since English uses “giants” loosely:

	Hecatoncheires	Cyclopes (Hesiod)	Titans	Gigantes
Parents	Uranus and Gaia	Uranus and Gaia	Uranus and Gaia	blood of Uranus falling on Gaia
Number	three	three	twelve	many
Mark	a hundred arms, fifty heads	a single eye	no monstrous trait	armor and spears; later serpent legs
Side	with Zeus	with Zeus	against Zeus	against the Olympians
Contribution	boulders, then guarding Tartarus	thunder and lightning	—	—

The Gigantes cause the most confusion. Hesiod has them spring from the drops of blood that fell on Earth when Uranus was castrated (183-186), making them half-brothers of the Hundred-Handers. Their war against the gods, the Gigantomachy, is a separate and later conflict. In Hesiod the Hundred-Handers never turn on Zeus; only the tradition credited to Eumelus places Aegaeon against him.

What the ancient sources say

• Hesiod (Theogony 147-158, 617-735, 815-819) names Cottus, Briareus and Gyes, gives them a hundred arms and fifty heads, and tells of their burial by Uranus, their release on Gaia’s advice, Cottus’ speech, the three hundred boulders, their guard over Tartarus and Briareus’ marriage to Cymopolea.
• Homer (Iliad 1.396-406) knows only Briareus-Aegaeon, whom Thetis brings to Olympus to foil a plot against Zeus.
• The Titanomachy attributed to Eumelus, known through a scholium on Apollonius of Rhodes, makes Aegaeon a son of Gaia and Pontus fighting for the Titans.
• Apollodorus (Library 1.1.1-4, 1.2.1) makes them Uranus’ firstborn, adds a second imprisonment by Cronus and the killing of their jailer Campe.
• Callimachus, Pausanias and Aelian preserve local traditions about Briareus: Etna, the Corinthian arbitration, the Pillars.
• Virgil (Aeneid 6.287, 10.565-568) makes Aegaeon an enemy of Jupiter and places Briareus at the entrance to the Underworld.

Further reading

To see where the Hundred-Handers fit in the story of the cosmos, start with the Greek creation myth and continue with the Titanomachy, where their boulders decide the war. Their parents have their own profiles: Uranus and Gaia. For their closest brothers, read about the Cyclopes; for the enemy they defeated, see Cronus; and for the prison they guard, see Tartarus. The Homeric episode reads well alongside the profile of Thetis. For the wider picture, start from the Greek mythology hub.