Titans and the Olympians

War of the Gods

Before the creation there was chaos, a formless void in which water and whirling clouds of gas mingled in a formless and changing mass. No growing thing or crawling beast existed. Then God brought order out of this confusion and the universe as we know it began to take form. Oceans, lakes, and rivers found their places and in course of time lofty mountains raised their tops. The earth with life on it was gradually formed.

Then were created the Titans, a mighty race of gigantic stature but well-proportioned and beautiful to behold. There were also created some monstrous creatures equal in size to the Titans but ugly and terrifying. Some of them were called Cyclops and these had only one immense eye set in the middle of the forehead. And there were also giants with a hundred arms who could not be left to wander the earth, so brutal was their strength and so evil their ways. They were therefore kept imprisoned deep down in the bowels of the earth in a region called Tartarus (Hades or Hell).

The youngest and strongest of the Titans was Cronus, who assumed leadership over all the rest. Cronus soon tired of ruling over a kingdom which had only beasts and other dumb creatures and he asked the Titan Prometheus to make some more noble and exciting creature. He moulded out of soft clay a miniature of himself, exactly like him in all respects, except in beauty and strength. In this way was created the first man. Now Prometheus made more men, and Cornus gave them life and set them down on the earth where they managed to survive, for his was a Golden Age and there was as yet no hate and envy. There were no seasons with their extremes of heat and cold, but constant spring.

Cornus took Titan Rhea as his wife and queen. She bore him a child who caused him great fear, for he suddenly recalled a prophecy that if he were to have children, one among them would become more powerful than he and eventually dethrone him. In great fear Cornus swallowed his first child, and each baby as it was born was swallowed in the same way. When the sixth child was born, Rhea, fearing the fatal visit of her husband, had the child carried away and hidden in a cave on the far-off island of Crete.

This child Zeus, or Jupiter as he came to be called in later times, grew up in the care of some women to whom he had been entrusted. At the age of one year he was tall and fully grown and already he was plotting against his father. It happened that Cornus visited the island of Crete and he was stunned to discover that here lived his son grown to manhood and already equal to him in physical prowess. He did not know that Zeus could rival him in cunning as well.

Zeus pretended to greet his father with affection and respects and he announced a celebration in honour of his father. Unsuspectingly Cornus drank a cup of wine presented to him. But a drug had been mixed in the wine which caused him to vomit! there came out from his stomach all the five children he had swallowed, alive and grown up.

While Cornus was still weak from his illness, Zeus called his brothers and sisters and asked them to hasten away with him, knowing full well that once the Titan had recovered he would wreck vengeance on them. They fled from Crete and made Mount Olympus their home, and came to be called gods and goddesses in course of time.

When he was fully recovered, Cornus called all the Titans to an assembly and declared war on his rebellious children. Only three of the giants failed to come at his call: old Iapetus and his sons Prometheus and Epitmetheus. Prometheus who had the gift of foreknowledge, knew that in the coming war the Titans would be defeated. He, therefore, advised his father and brother to remain neutral. For ten years the war was waged and no side seemed to be near victory except that the forces of Zeus still held their stronghold on the top of Mt. Olympus.

At last Cornus called a council of war and said to his followers, “Let us build up a mountain even loftier than Olympus and from there we will easily attack them and put them to rout.” Then they went to work and tore huge rocks out of Mount Ossa and heaped these pieces one by one on Mount Pelion, knowing that when the one mountain was added to the other they would tower high above their rivals.

Now Rhea, the wife of Cornus, who feared for the safety of her children, went to Zeus and told him of the plan. She also revealed to him that deep down in the earth were imprisoned the powerful Cyclops and the giants of a hundred arms. Even if they remained where they were, they could make the whole earth tremble. The Cyclops, on the other hand, knew the secret of forging thunderbolts and this was indeed a powerful weapon which Zeus could make use of. Accordingly, Zeus descended to the underworld and offered to free these giants if they would come to his aid. All readily agreed. The hundred armed giants stationed below awaited their signal. As for the Cyclops, Zeus led them up to Olympus, where they began immediately to forge their thunderbolts.

Cornus and the other Titans meanwhile continued to work and soon the growing mountain was level with Olympus. At a signal from Zues, the giants in the earth’s centre began to shake the world, so that the newly-made mountain collapsed. From the Cyclops, he took the thunder bolts and hurled them with devastating effect. The Titans now begged for mercy, knowing that victory had at last gone to the enemy.

Zeus set apart the grim region of Tartarus as their prison; and after falling for nine days and nine nights, the Titans reached this realm, to which they were condemned for ever. Atlas, a son of Iapetus, was given a different punishment; he was condemned for ever to bear the world on his shoulders. The aged Iapetus and his other sons, Prometheus and Epimetheus, were left free to roam the surface of the earth. Zeus was now God, the supreme ruler of all the world.

Thus began the rule of the second dynasty of the gods, called the Olympians, Keats has made use of this war of the gods in his epic fragment Hyperion.