When gods go to war: what was the Titanomachy of Greek mythology?

According to Theogony, an epic poem by Hesiod from the eighth century BC, Cronus had overthrown his father, castrating him in the process, but was warned that he would befall the same fate.

To defy this prophecy, he made the somewhat extreme decision to devour his children as soon as they were born. This is when things began to go wrong for the Titans.

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He ate the goddesses Demeter, Hestia and Hera, along with the gods Hades and Poseidon. But the last child, Zeus, was saved from becoming a meal by his mother, Rhea.

She tricked Cronus into eating a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead, and hid Zeus on the island of Crete. Once fully grown, he returned to fulfil the prophecy, forcing his father to vomit up his siblings before overthrowing him.

Thus began the Titanomachy, a war between the gods that lasted 10 years.

The Titanomachy explained

On one side of the Titanomachy were the Titans led by Cronus, and on the other was Zeus and his allies – who included more than his recently regurgitated brothers and sisters.

One of Zeus’s most important tasks in this contest for the universe was to free the Cyclopes (three one-eyed giants) and the Hecatoncheires (three enormous creatures with one hundred hands and fifty heads) from the deepest abyss of the underworld in return for their support.

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Skilled craftsmen, the Cyclopes forged the thunderbolts that Zeus wielded as weapons, as well as Poseidon’s trident and Hades’ helmet, which gave him the power of invisibility. The immensely strong Hecatoncheires could hold off the Titans by bombarding them with huge boulders.

Several Titans joined Zeus’s ranks, too, including Themis, a goddess personifying justice, law and order, and her son Prometheus. He would become best known for stealing fire from the realm of the gods and gifting it to the first humans. His punishment was to be chained to a rock and have an eagle eat his liver, only for it to grow back the following day and be eaten again.

How did the Titanomachy end?

After a decade of war, Zeus emerged victorious from the last great battle of the Titanomachy and became king of the gods. Holding dominion over the sky, he divided the cosmos with his brothers; Poseidon became a water god who took control of the seas and Hades became the god of death and the underworld.

Cronus and most of the Titans would be imprisoned in Tartarus, the abyss from which the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires had been freed, although some of Zeus’s enemies received unique punishments. Atlas, for example, was condemned to hold up the heavens on his shoulders for eternity.

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The gods now resided on Mount Olympus, the highest peak in Greece, hence the name Olympians. But Zeus’s position was not yet safe: according to another Greek myth, the Titanomachy was followed by the Gigantomachy, a battle against the giants.