Titans & Nymphs

What would it be like to have the weight of the sky on your shoulders? Well, just ask Atlas. He’s one of the mighty Titans, the gods who came before the Olympians, and a brother of Kronos. After Zeus frees his siblings from his father’s belly, the Olympians wage a long and destructive war on the Titans called the Titanomachy. Zeus and the Olympians win. As punishment, Zeus forces Atlas to stand forever at the western edge of the earth, holding up one end of the sky.

Her name is the Greek word for “earth,” and her husband is Ouranos, the sky. Gaia gives birth to the mountains and the sea, the three one-eyed Cyclopes, and the “hundred-handers,” a trio of monsters who each have one hundred hands and fifty heads. She and Ouranos are mother and father of the Titans. As often is the case in myths, there’s a problem: Ouranos hates all of his sons, so he imprisons them in a cave. But Gaia hatches a plan with her youngest, Kronos. She makes a curved, jagged blade of the strongest steel and gives it to Kronos, who in turn uses it to kill his father and take over as ruler of the world.

Born with long gray hair, their name, Graiai, means “old ladies” in Greek. The trio share a single eye that they pass back and forth to each other, and they eat with a single shared tooth. Our hero Perseus has a question that only they can answer.

The number-one Titan. His mother, Gaia—the earth—, was angry at his father, Ouranos, for locking her sons away, so she gave her youngest son, Kronos, a sickle made of adamantium (yep, the same metal that Wolverine’s claws and Perseus’s sword are made of). Kronos uses the blade to defeat his father. But what goes around comes around. Kronos learns that he, too, is fated to be overthrown by one of his own children. Hoping to evade the prophecy, each time his wife, Rhea, has a child, he swallows the baby up.

Even though her father, the Titan Atlas, is Zeus’s sworn enemy, Maia is such a beautiful nymph that the king of the Olympians falls in love with her. Maia makes her home in a cave on Mount Kyllene, where Zeus secretly visits her. Soon Maia gives birth to a son, Hermes, that wily trickster god who becomes the messenger of Olympus—and the host of our podcast!

She is the wisest of all the gods. For the ancient Greeks, her name means wisdom, counsel, or a good plan. Zeus falls in love with Metis but learns that if she bears him a son, that child will overthrow him, just as he overthrew his father. So one day, when Zeus and Metis are playfully transforming themselves into all sorts of animals (gods do very interesting things for fun), Zeus suggests that Metis turn herself into a fly. And when she does, Zeus swallows her up so that she will always give him sound advice. But Metis has a secret: she’s already pregnant with Zeus’s child, and she causes him terrible headaches as she hammers armor for her baby-to-be. Zeus cries for help from the other gods, and when Hephaestus splits his forehead open with his mighty hammer, out springs Athena—fully grown and wearing the gleaming armor forged by her mother.

She has six children with Kronos—who, as we know by now, swallows each one whole at birth because he fears the prophecy that he’ll be overthrown by one of them. Maybe five times is acceptable, but six? Rhea has had enough, and she gives birth to baby Zeus in a secret cave on the island of Crete. She wraps up a stone in a baby blanket and tricks Kronos into eating it, thinking it’s their child. The rest, as they say, is mythology. Zeus grows up in hiding, strong and free. With the help of Metis, he tricks his father into throwing up the swaddled rock and his five brothers and sisters—the Olympians.

There are thousands of them, running and dancing and spending their days living in nature. Some (the Dryads) prefer dwelling in forests, while others (the Naiads) are always close to the fresh waters of springs, rivers, and ponds. The Oceanids frolic in the sea, and the Oreads are happiest in the mountains. They aren’t quite gods, and certainly not mortals, so we can think of them as minor divinities. Most of them are youthful and very beautiful, which sometimes draws the attention of the gods and other mythical creatures. Many of the nymphs also fall in love with mortals.