According to the Greek creation story as told in Hesiod’s Theogony, in the beginning, there was a great emptiness called Chaos. From Chaos, Gaia, a goddess and the earth itself, emerged, as did Tartarus. The goddess Nyx, night and darkness, may also have emerged at this time, representing what remained of Chaos.
A similarly complex mix of deity and place as Gaia, Tartarus is a kind of anti-earth. It is an abyss of darkness that acts like a prison, contrasting with the light and openness of the earth.
Location and Nature is Tartarus
According to Hesiod, if a bronze anvil fell from heaven, it would fall for nine days before it reached the earth. From the earth, the anvil would take a further nine days to reach Tartarus. Similarly, in The Iliad, Homer says that Tartarus is as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth.
While Hades represented the underworld for the Greeks, Tartarus was also sometimes considered an underworld, though specifically for the very wicked according to Plato’s Gorgias. This is why Tartarus is sometimes located within Hades. Apollodorus described Tartarus as a gloomy place in Hades as distant from the earth as the earth is from the sky.
Rather than being a place for the dead, Tartarus is more commonly referred to as a prison for the most dangerous supernatural beings.
Residents of Tartarus
Uranus was the first son of Gaia. He mated with his mother, giving birth to the Titans, one-eyed Cyclopes, and the hundred-armed Hecatonchires. Uranus considered the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires unworthy, and so banished them to Tartarus and sent Campe there to guard them. This upset their mother Gaia, so she convinced Cronus, the youngest of her Titan children, to overthrow his father and become the leader of the Titans.
Later Zeus would challenge the Titans for supremacy, and he released the Cyclopes from Tartarus to help him in the war. When he won, he banished all the Titans, with a few exceptions, to Tartarus. The Hecatonchires became the new guards of Tartarus. Arke, one of the Olympians, worked for the Titans as a messenger during the war, so her wings were removed, and she was also thrown into Tartarus.
Over time, other gods would also find themselves banished to Tartarus. Apollo once threatened to throw his younger brother Hermes into Tartarus, and Apollo was almost condemned there by Zeus. Eventually, Typhon would be thrown into Tartarus by Zeus.
Cyclopes
The Cyclopes were giant one-eyed creatures in Greek myth, known for their size and strength. They have a few distinct but intertwined mythologies.
Hesiod says that there were three Cyclopes brothers Brontes (thunder), Steropes (lightning), and Arges (bright). They were craftsmen who made Zeus’ thunderbolt, which they made for him after he freed them from Tartarus. They may also have made Poseidon’s trident and Hades’ cap of invisibility.
In the 3rd century BCE, the poet Callimachus suggested that they were the assistants of Hephaestus, the smith god. They were also associated with the island of Sicily, where they had a forge under Mount Etna, and the Aeolian Islands, volcanic islands where they worked with Hephaestus.
One story suggests that these Cyclopes were later killed by Apollo in revenge for Zeus killing his son Asclepius with a thunderbolt since they made the thunderbolt. Other sources suggest that Zeus killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making thunderbolts for anyone else.
In The Odyssey, Homer described the Cyclopes as a group of uncivilized shepherds encountered by the crew on a remote island. One, Polyphemus, is described as the son of Poseidon and Thoosa. Without this note, it could be suggested that these were the children of the three brothers, sons of Gaia and Cronus, made after Zeus freed them from Tartarus. It is unclear in Homer whether they are all sons of Poseidon, but Euripides later calls the same cave-dwellers “Poseidon’s one-eyed sons”. They have no agriculture, no wine, and live on milk, cheese, and the meat of sheep, making them barbarians.
They are also described as the great builders who built the Cyclopean Walls of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos. They are used to explain the construction of the stupendous wall made from massive stones (much like aliens were used to explain the great pyramids).
Hecatonchires
The Hecatonchires were three giants, each with 50 heads and 100 arms. They were named Cottus (furious), Briareus (sea goat), and Gyges (long-limbed). According to Hesiod, they were the last three children born of Gaia and Uranus, and according to Apollodorus, they were the first. They were imprisoned in Tartarus by Uranus.
Gia apparently foretold that with the help of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires, Zeus would overthrow Cronus and the Titans, so Zeus freed both the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes from Tartarus to fight. But they were then sent back to Tartarus to guard the Titans imprisoned there after the war. Other sources suggest that they fought on the side of the Titans, which is why they were returned to Tartarus.
Briareus is the most famous of the three and is singled out as being good. He is rewarded for this by Poseidon, who gives him his daughter Cymopolea as his wife. In The Iliad, he is also known as Aegaeon, a name given to him by mortals. When the other gods think to revolt against Zeus over the Trojan War, his mighty presence alongside the god dissuades them.
The lost Titonomachy, Virgil, and Ovid suggest that Aegaeon actually allied with the Titans in the war and was killed by Poseidon. The Argonauts sail past his great tomb not far from Phrygia, which was erected at the place where he died.
Titans
The Titans were one of the sets of children of Gaia and Uranus. There are originally six males and six females: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Cronus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. Of course, they go on to have children of their own, including the likes of Prometheus, Atlas, Helios, and Leto.
After they are born, Uranus decides that he does not like his children and decrees that no more Titans should be born. In response, Gaia convinces the youngest of the male Titans, Cronus, to kill his father and take his place as the leader of the Titans.
Cronus marries his sister Rhea, and they have several children including Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. But he learns that his children are destined to overthrow him, so he decides to swallow them. But Rhea manages to save Zeus by placing a rock in his swaddling. Zeus decides to overthrow Cronus. He forces him to vomit up his siblings and then breaks the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires out of Tartarus to make war against the Titans. They win and throw the Titans, with a few exceptions, into Tartarus.
The Titans therefore represent divine order before the Olympians established the new order and are sometimes called the former gods. Because they lived in Tartarus, a kind of underworld, they became known as chthonic gods.
Aside from Cronus and some of the Titans that continued to live among the gods, they do not really have individual stories or personalities, and often only serve a genealogical function.
Campe
Campe was the first great monster sent to guard Tartarus, killed by Zeus when he freed the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires. This may be the same Campe that Diodorus Siculus says was killed by Dionysus while camped in Libya.
A description of this Campe is given by the Greek poet Nonnus. She has a high head and crooked-shaped body, a thousand crawlers for viperish feet, spitting poison and flame. Around her neck flowered 50 heads of various wild beasts, including lion, board, and dog. The middle of her body was that of a woman but with serpent scales and with serpents spitting poison for hair. The lower half of her body was also made of various serpents. Basically, an amalgam of all the worst things imaginable.
Mortal Residents of Tartarus
There are also a few specific wicked mortals who are described as suffering eternal torture in Tartarus. Some could be sent temporarily until they paid for their sins, while others were eternally damned.
According to Plato, Tartarus had three judges. Rhadamanthus was the son of Zeus and Europa and also the king of Crete and was assigned to judge Asian souls. Aeacus, the son of Zeus and the nymph Aegina and the king of the island of Aegina was assigned to judge European souls. Minos, another son of Zeus and Europa was the king of Crete who made King Aegeus send seven young boys and seven young girls to the labyrinth every nine years to be eaten by the Minotaur. He was the judge of the Greeks.
King Sisyphus
King Sisyphus of Ephyra was sent to Tartarus for violating the rules of hospitality, seducing his own niece, and reporting one of Zeus’ sexual affairs to the other gods. As a result, Zeus ordered Thanatos, the personification of death, to chain Sisyphus up in Tartarus. The king ended up tricking death and chaining him up instead, resulting in a period where there was no death. Ares freed Thanatos and turned Sisyphus over to him.
Later, Sisyphus convinced Persephone to free him so that could return to the earth to scold his wife for not burying him properly. He then refused to return to the underworld, and Hermes had to drag him back forcefully. He was then forced to forever roll a large boulder up the top of a mountain, that he would not succeed at, even though he tried for eternity.
King Tantalus
King Tantalus landed in Tartarus when he cut up and boiled his own son to serve the gods. He also stole the ambrosia of the gods to learn its secrets. His punishment was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, but whenever he reached up, the fruit would be beyond his grasp. Whenever he bent down, the water would recede.
King Ixion
King Ixion of Lapiths hated his father-in-law and pushed him onto a bred of coal, committing the first-ever act of family murder. While the other princes of Thessaly demanded that Ixion not be allowed to cleanse himself of sin, Zeus invited him to a meal on Mount Olympus. This proved a disaster because Ixion fell in love with Hera. He ended up seducing a cloud clone of Hera, which gave birth to the centaurs, but Ixion had failed the test. Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt, and he was sent to Tartarus. His punishment was to be tied to a winged flaming wheel that was always spinning, representing his burning lust.
King Solmoneus
King Solmoneus was sent to Tartarus after imitating Zeus, causing the angry go to smite him with a thunderbolt.
King Phlegyas
When the pregnant daughter of King Phlegyas of the Lapiths was killed by either Artemis of Apollo, he set fire to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He was killed by Apollo and sent to Tartarus where he was entombed in a rock and stared in front of an eternal feast.
The Danaids
The Danaids were the 50 daughters of Danaus, king of Libya. They were accused of murdering their husbands and were sent to Tartarus, where they were forced to carry water in a jug to wash away their sins, but the jugs were cracked, so the water always flowed out.
Ocnus
Ocnus, a prince of Alba Longa in Italy, found himself in Tartarus for unknown reasons as was condemned to spin rope as fast as possible, but as fast as he spin, it was eaten by a donkey.
Tityos
The giant Tityos was sent to rape Leto, the lover of Zeus and the mother of Apollo and Artemis, on the orders of a jealous Hera. Apollo and Artemis slew the giant, who was sent to Tartarus. There his body was stretched out and vultures fed on his liver for eternity.
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