The Hundred-Handers

Three monstrous brothers — Cottus, Briareos (also called Aigaion), and Gyges — sons of Uranus and Gaia, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads. Their father loathed them and locked them inside Earth as soon as they were born, hiding them in her depths and refusing to let them come up to the light. Gaia, in pain from holding them, plotted with Kronos to overthrow Uranus — but Kronos kept them imprisoned after he came to power. Zeus released them in the tenth year of the Titanomachy, gave them nectar and ambrosia, and they fought beside him: each brother hurled three hundred boulders at a time from his hundred hands, broke the Titans, and earned their reward — to be set as guardians at the bronze gates of Tartarus where the defeated Titans were chained (Hesiod *Theog.* 617-735).

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