Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After the Titans were cast down, Gaia, angered, bore the Giants—sons of unmatched size, with long hair and beards, and serpent coils for legs in the usual description—and they attacked heaven from Phlegra (Pallene). An oracle told the gods that none of the Giants could be killed unless a mortal fought beside the immortals. Gaia sought a herb that would protect her children even from that fate; Zeus forbade Helios, Selene, and Eos to shine, cut the herb himself (or prevented its discovery), and Athena fetched Heracles as the required mortal. The battle matched gods to named Giants. Porphyrion assaulted Hera; Zeus struck him with the thunderbolt and Heracles shot him as he fell. Alcyoneus could not die while he stood on his native Pallene; Heracles shot him, and on Athena’s advice dragged him beyond that land so the death held. Ephialtes was shot in the left eye by Apollo and in the right by Heracles. Dionysus felled Eurytus with his thyrsus; Hecate burned Clytius with torches; Hephaestus killed Mimas with missiles of hot metal. Athena cast the island of Sicily upon Enceladus in his flight and flayed Pallas for her aegis (in Apollodorus’s telling of that name). Poseidon pursued Polybotes across the sea and buried him under the broken mass of Nisyrus torn from Cos. Hermes, wearing Hades’ cap of invisibility, slew Hippolytus; Artemis killed Gration; the Fates clubbed Agrius and Thoas with pestles of bronze; the other Giants fell to Zeus’s bolts and Heracles’ arrows. Victory confirmed Olympian rule after Titanomachy and Typhon. The war’s aetia explain volcanic Sicily, Nisyrus, and Heracles’ unique status as the mortal without whom the gods could not prevail—a status that later tradition joins to his apotheosis.