From Manual of Mythology, by Alexander S. Murray; Revised Edition, Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher, 1895; pp. 41-43.
41IS a personification of the sky as the ancients saw and understood its phenomena, and with him, according to the version of mythology usually accepted by the Greeks, begins the race of gods. Next succeeded Cronus, and lastly, Zeus (Jupiter). With regard to this triple succession of supreme rulers of the world, we should notice the different and progressive signification of their three names. Uranus signifies the heavens viewed as the husband of the earth, and by his warmth and moisture produces life and vegetation everywhere on it; Cronus, his successor, was the god of harvest, who also ripened and matured every form of life; while in the person of Zeus (Jupiter), god of the light of heaven, as his name implies, culminated the organization and perfectly 42 wise and just dispensation of the affairs of the universe. Uranus , as we have already observed, was a son of Gæa (the earth), whom he afterwards married, the fruit of that union being the Titans, the Hecatoncheires (the hundred-handed ones), and the Cyclopes .
The Hecatoncheires, or Centimani, beings each with a hundred hands, were three in number; Cottus, Gyges or Gyes, and Briareus, and represented the frightful crashing of waves and its resemblance to the convulsion of earthquakes. The Cyclopes also were three in number: Brontes with his thunder, Sterŏpes with his lightning, and Arges with his stream of light. They were represented as having only one eye, which was placed at the juncture of nose and brow. It was, however, a large flashing eye, as became beings who were personifications of the storm-cloud, with its flashes of destructive lightning and peals of thunder. From a similarity observed between the phenomena of storms and those of volcanic eruptions, it was usually supposed that the Cyclopes lived in the heart of burning mountains; above all, in Mount Ætna, in Sicily, where they acted as apprentices of Hephæstus (Vulcan), assisting him to make thunderbolts for Zeus, and in other works. Uranus, it was said, alarmed at their promise of fierceness and strength, had cast the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes at their birth back into the womb of the earth from which they had sprung.
The Titans were, like the Olympian deities, twelve in number, and grouped for the most part in pairs: Oceanus (flood) and Tethys (nurse), Hyperion (wanderer on high), and Theia (shining one), Creüs and Eurybia, Cœus and Phœbe, Cronus and Rhea, Japetus and Themis. Instead of Eurybia we find frequently Mnemósyne. Their names, though not in every case quite intelligible, show that they were personifications of those primary elements and forces of nature to the operation of which, in the first 43 ages, the present configuration of the earth was supposed to be due. While Themis, Mnemosyne, and Japetus may be singled out as personifications of a civilizing force in the nature of things, and as conspicuous for having offspring endowed with the same character, the other Titans appear to represent wild, powerful, and obstructive forces. In keeping with his character we find them rising in rebellion first against their father and afterwards against Zeus.
In the former experiment the result was that Uranus, as we learn from the poetic account of the myth, threw them into Tartarus, where he kept them bound. But Gæa, his wife, grieving at the hard fate of her offspring, provided the youngest son, Cronus, with a sickle or curved knife, which she had made of stubborn adamant, and told him how and when to wound his father with it irremediably. The enterprize succeeded, the Titans were set free, married their sisters, and begat a numerous family of divine beings, while others of the same class sprang from the blood of the wound of Uranus as it fell to the ground. Of these were the Giants, monsters with legs formed of serpents; the Melian Nymphs, or nymphs of the oaks, from which the shafts used in war were fashioned; and the Erinys, or Furiæ, as the Romans called them, — Tisíphone, Megæra, and Alecto, — creatures whose function it was originally to avenge the shedding of a parent’s blood. Their form was that of women, with hair of snakes and girdles of vipers. They were a terror to criminals, whom they pursued with unrelenting fury. The whole of these divine beings, however, with the exception of the Erinys, who were worshipped at Athens under the name of the “venerable deities,” were excluded from the religion of the Greeks, and had a place only in the mythology, while among the Romans they were unknown till later times, and even then were introduced only as poetic fictions, with no hold upon the religious belief of the people.