In Greek mythology, the Titans were the rulers of heaven before the Olympian gods. They were the children of Gaia, the personification of the earth and one of the first gods to emerge from the water of Chaos, and Uranus, Gaia’s son and the god of the sky.
Together Gaia and Uranus had several groups of children, the most important of which were the 12 Titans. These 12 Titans had many children of their own, who are also often referred to as Titans, but in many accounts, the term Titan should only be applied to the original 12.
The Titans became the rulers of the cosmos when they overthrew their father Uranus. They were encouraged to do this by Gaia when Uranus decided to imprison his Titan children, as well as his other children with Gaia, the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes. She asked the Titans to help her deal with Uranus, but only Cronos agreed. He used a magic sickle that Gaia gave him to castrate Uranus and then established himself as the new leader of the cosmos.
The Olympian gods would eventually go to war with the Titans and overthrow them, taking power of the heavens and earth for themselves, and banishing many of the Titans to Tartarus. This war was known as the Titanomachy. Some sources also suggest that the Titans were later set free, though the details are thin.
For most of the Titans, their mythological background is very thin. They exist mostly to be the primordial source of other nature-based deities, such as the rivers and the sun and the moon.
Oceanus
Oceanus was the eldest son of Gaia and Uranus and was the embodiment of the Oceans. He married his sister Tethys and together they had numerous children. Their sons became river gods and their daughters became Oceanids, or water nymphs. Hesiod suggests that there were 3,000 river gods and 3,000 Oceanids, quite a few of which had children with Zeus. These include Metis, the mother of Athena, and Eurynome, the mother of the Charities.
Oceanus was also famously the father of Styx, the river that separated the world of the living from the underworld, and with Gaia, the father of the Harpies.
While Oceanus probably did not take part in the attack on Uranus, though some Orphic fragments suggest that he may have, Oceanus certainly did not join the other Titans in the Titanomachy against the Olympians. In fact, he recommended that his daughter Styx and her children join Zeus in their mission to overthrow the Titans. The Iliad also suggests that Hera was sent to stay with Oceanus and Tethys as foster parents during the war for her protection.
Oceanus also appears in a few stories after the Titanomachy. According to Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Oceanus visits his nephew Prometheus while he is being punished by Zeus. He advises Prometheus to humble himself before Zeus, but Prometheus mocks Oceanus and suggests that he is a coward. Also, according to the myth of Heracles traveling in Helios’ golden cup, Oceanus sent waves to challenge Hercules and rock the cup. Heracles threatened to shoot Oceanus, causing the Titan to stop in fear. These stories suggest that Oceanus was seen as a coward for not standing up against Zeus during the Titanomachy.
Oceanus appears on an Attic black-figure depiction from the 6th century BCE in a procession of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. He appears at the end of a long procession of the divine following a chariot driven by Athena and containing Artemis. He has bull horns, holds a snake in his left hand, a fish in his right hand, and has the body of a fish from the waist down. He is followed by his wife Tethys.
He also appears in the Pergamon relief of the Gigantomachy dating from the 2nd century BCE. He stands half nude and is battling a giant falling from the night sky. Fragments of the figure of Tethys survive nearby.
Coeus
Also known Koios and Polus, Coeus was the god of the questioning mind and the second Titan son of Uranus and Gaia. He plays no active role in Greek mythology and usually only appears on the lists of the Titans. He was married to his sister Phoebe and had a daughter Leto, who would give birth to Artemis and Apollo, and Asteria, the mother of Hecate.
Coeus was reportedly sent to Tartarus following the Titanomachy and was overcome by madness and tried to escape, but he was repelled the Cerberus, the canine companion of Hades. He may have been eventually freed by Zeus.
Crius
The third Titan son was Crius or Kiros, which is the Greek word for ram. He married his half-sister Eurybia, who was the daughter of Gaia and Pontus, the sea. They had several children including Astraeus (a god of the winds), Perses, and Pallas. He reportedly participated in the Titanomachy, but his specific role is not recorded.
Hyperion
Hyperion, whose name means “he who goes before,” was another Titan son married to his sister Theia. Together they gave birth to Helios, the sun, Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. Like his son, Hyperion was considered a personification of the sun.
Iapetus
Iapetus, whose name means “the piercer,” was another of the Titan sons, who married a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, variously identified as Clymene or Asia. Together they had several children including Atlas, who holds up the sky, Prometheus, who shared forbidden technology with mankind, Epimetheus, who also served as a representative of mankind among the gods, and Menoetius, doomed might. With other women, he was also the father of the heroes Buphagus and Anchiale.
Hesiod regarded the four divine children of Iapetus as the ancestors of mankind and said that the worst qualities of men were inherited from these four gods.
He is described as the closest with his brother Cronos. According to Homer, he ruled alongside Cronos during the Golden Age and was then sent to Tartarus alongside him where neither breeze nor light of the sun reaches them.
Cronos
Cronos is the most famous of the Titans. The youngest, like Zeus who was the youngest of the Olympians, he became the leader of his siblings. He was the one who heeded the call of his mother Gaia to castrate his father Uranus to prevent him from imprisoning all his children with Gaia, including the Titans. He is often depicted holding a sickle.
He then married his sister Rhea and they set themselves up as the king and queen of existence. They are described as ruling over a Golden Age during which there was no need for rules and laws and everyone did the right thing. Another version of the story suggests that Ophion and Eurynome ruled over the cosmos during this Gold Age, and that Rhea and Cronos fought and overthrew them.
Cronos learned from Gaia and Uranus a prophecy that he was destined to be overthrown by his own children, just as he had overthrown his father. Therefore, despite fathering children on Rhea, he then swallowed each child. He sired Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon, and then finally Zeus. But Rhea wanted to save her final son, and so gave birth to him secretly on the island of Crete. She then gave Cronos a stone wrapped in swaddling to swallow in his stead.
Rhea hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida on Crete. Later the grown Zeus decided to come back and overthrow his father. First, he gave Cronos a poison that forced him to regurgitate his siblings. He then freed the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes from Tartarus, where they had been imprisoned by Uranus and re-imprisoned by Cronos, and gave them thunderbolts to join in a war against Cronos and the Titans. After the Olympians won the war, Cronos and many of the other Titans were confined to Tartarus. Some sources suggest that he was later freed by Zeus and that Cronos became the ruler of the Isle and the Blessed.
Theia
Theia was the oldest of the Titan sisters and was the goddess of sight and vision. She also endowed gold, silver, and gems with their gleam and intrinsic value. Married to her brother Hyperion, she was the mother of Helios, Selene, and Eos, the celestial gods.
According to a fable by Plutarch, “The Moon and her Mother,” the moon goddess Selene asked her mother Theia to weave a garment for her, and the mother responded that she was unable to do so because Selene keeps changing her size and shape throughout the month.
She does not seem to have gone to Tartarus after the Titanomachy, as she is described a living with her son, presumably Helios, in his palace. She also appears in the Gigantomachy frieze on the Pergamon altar fighting a giant alongside her son Helios.
Rhea
Rhea, whose name suggests that she was associated with the earth like her mother Gaia, married her brother Cronos after the overthrow of Uranus and gave birth to the oldest of the Olympian gods, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus.
When Cronos started swallowing their children to prevent them from overthrowing him, she hatched a plan to protect Zeus. She gave birth to him hidden away on Crete, and then gave Cronos a rock in swaddling to swallow instead. When Cronos asked her to feed the boy one more time before he was eaten, she pushed the rock to her breast and milk sprayed into the air, creating the Milky Way.
Rhea then hid Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida protected by her warrior-like bodyguards Kouretes and Dactyls. Some sources suggest that a golden dog guarded a goat who fed Zeus, and Zeus later made the goat immortal and placed it among the stars. She later assisted Zeus in overthrowing Cronos, but the details are not preserved.
Rhea remained in Olympus but took a back seat, letting the Olympians take the lead. Reportedly, she disapproved of Zeus marrying Hera, and so they had to marry in secret. She was described as present at the birth of Apollo and was linked with childbirth like several other goddesses. After Demeter was reunited with Persephone, Zeus sent Rhea to persuade Demeter to return to Olympus and rejoin the gods. She is also described as raising Dionysus after the death of his mother Semele, and later healed the madness inflicted on him by Hera.
Themis
Themis was the personification of justice, divine order, law, and customs. She was represented by the sacred scales. He was closely associated with oracles and prophecies, including the Oracle at Delphi, which she reportedly built, and was later passed on to Apollo, whose birth she witnessed.
She went on to be the second wife of her nephew Zeus, with whom she was the mother of the Horae, the seasons, listed as Eunomia (law), Dike (justice), Eirene (peace), and the Moirai (fates) listed as Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. She may also have been a foster mother for Zeus while he was in hiding.
As an oracle, Themis warned the gods of the civil war in Thebes and warned Zeus and Poseidon not to marry Theus because their son would be more powerful than their father. Homer described her as being the one who called the council of the gods on Olympus.
Unlike most of the other Titans, Themis had several temples in ancient Greece. She had temples at the oracular shrines of Zeus at Dodona, at Tanagra, in Athens near the Acropolis, in Rhamnous beside the temple of Nemesis, and at Phthiotis.
Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory and was another Titaness who married her nephew Zeus, giving birth to the nine Muses. The Muses were: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (music and lyric poetry), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy). He slept with her in the guise of a mortal shepherd for nine consecutive nights. Mnemosyne also presided over a pool in Hades where the dead could drink and remember their past lives when reincarnated.
She was often invoked in epic poetry, for example, Homer’s speaker invoking her to help them accurately remember the poem they are reciting. Statues of her are mentioned in the sanctuaries of the other gods, often alongside the Muses.
Phoebe
Phoebe, whose name means bright, was another Titan who married her brother Coeus and gave birth to Leto and Asteria. She was considered an oracular deity, and also a lunar goddess, often associated with Artemis and Selene.
According to Aeschylus, Phoebe was the original founder of the Oracle at Delphi, which was later taken by her sister Themis and then retrieved and passed on to Apollo. She seems to be another Titan who was not sent to Tartarus because she appears on the Pergamon Altar fighting alongside the gods in the Gigantomachy. She wears a diadem and is wielding a flaming sword.
Tethys
Tethys was the wife of Oceanus and the mother of the 3,000 river gods and 3,000 Oceanids. She came to be identified with the sea like her husband and children.
Passages from Homer’s Iliad, suggest that Homer knew of an alternative tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys were the parents of the gods in place of Gaia and Uranus. He calls them “from whom the gods are sprung,” and the “genesis of all.”
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