What happened first was that father Cronus
felt the sting of competition from Obriareus
and Cottus and Gyges, the Hundred-Handers.
So he bound them in strong chains.
He thought he had to do this
because of their overwhelming prowess.
How they looked. How big they were.
So he installed them beneath the broad ground. [620]
Painfully did they dwell there, beneath the ground,
at the lowest point, inside Earth’s great boundary,
grieving very much, and
holding great sorrow in their heart.
But the son of Cronus, Zeus, plotted
with the other deathless gods, the Olympians
to whom rich-haired Rhea gave birth
from her intercourse with Cronus. [625]
Acting on the shrewdness of the Earth,
Zeus freed them, and they saw the light again.
Earth had explained in detail to Zeus and the Olympians
everything they needed to know:
only with the Hundred-Handers could they carry off
the victory, and win wide fame.
They had been fighting for much too long.
A painfully competitive labor it was, the war
between the gods known as the Titans,
and those born of Cronus, the Olympians. [630]
Between these two sides,
the mighty battle continued to rage.
Wondrous were the Titans,
with their headquarters high up on Mount Othrys.
But camped on Mount Olympus were the gods,
those who now give blessings to us,
those to whom rich-haired Rhea gave birth
after she lay with Cronus.
Painfully competitive was the wrath
they had against one another. [635]
Without pause,
they had fought ten full years.
With no backing down from dangerous strife,
yet with no decisive battle
for either side, the only achievement of the war
had been prolonged war.
But then Zeus supplied the Hundred-Handers
with just what they needed.
Nectar to drink. Ambrosia to eat.
The diet of the gods themselves. [640]
It fed the brave competitive spirit
within all their chests.
Thus did they taste the charms
of nectar and ambrosia.
Then the Zeusfather of husbands and gods
spoke to them, in their midst, as ally to ally:
“Listen to me now, splendid children
of Earth and Sky (Gaia and Uranus).
The competitive spirit in my chest
urges me to say these things: [645]
already for far too long now,
aligned against one another,
every day, we have been battling
to the end, for supreme victory,
the twelve Titan gods
versus the six children of Cronus.
I want you, with your great brute force,
with your unstoppable hands,
to show the Titans, head-on,
what truly deadly battle looks like. [650]
Look at how well we get along.
Remember how much you used to suffer.
Now in the light, you see things clearly.
You are free from the painful chains.
And that is our battle plan:
to dispel confusion, to remove the darkness.”
So said Zeus.
And noble Cottus replied in turn:
“Divine Zeus, you make things clear,
things of which we have not been unaware. [655]
And we ourselves admit your superiority,
both in tactical mind and strategic purpose.
You have defended us, immortals,
from a cold doom.
Indeed, your plan has dispelled the confusion.
You removed us from the darkness.
Back again,
freed from hard chains,
we come to you, Lord, son of Cronus.
This is our experience of hopes surpassed. [660]
Therefore, with earnest intent
and after careful deliberation,
in this deadly battle, we declare ourselves
the allies of your power.
We will fight against the Titans,
in combat, strafing them.”
So said Cottus. And the gods,
they who give blessings to us, gave hearty acclamation
when they heard this speech.
Their competitive spirit desired victory in war, [665]
even more so than it had before.
And so they initiated a dreadful battle
on that same day. All of them,
female and male, joined the fight:
the twelve Titan gods
versus the six children of Cronus
now joined by those Zeus had brought,
from the underground Darkness, into the light.
Terrible and mighty were they.
They held overwhelming force. [670]
One hundred hands
whirled out from the shoulders
on each one of them.
And each one of them had fifty heads
grown up above their shoulders.
Strong were their arms.
Ready for grim war,
they lined up against the Titans.
In their strong hands,
they held massive rocks. [675]
On the other side,
the Titans continued to fortify their battle line
in eager anticipation.
They displayed might and manpower simultaneously
on both sides. Then a terrible echo sounded out
across the limitless waters:
the Earth roared loudly,
and the wide Sky groaned
as it shook, because lofty Olympus itself
was shaking right at its foot, [680]
as the immortals began to clash.
The heavy quake reached even
opaque Tartarus.
So too the high-pitched howling
of the indescribable fray,
of the screaming of stones thrown.
They took aim for pain;
and, letting fly, both sides hit the mark.
Then cries ricocheted
across the starry Sky on both sides [685]
as they charged.
They hurtled together with a loud yell.
And this was the point
where Zeus held nothing back.
While keeping his mind in steady control,
he unveiled unchecked
violence. Down from the Sky,
down from Olympus,
he strode forth on a carpet of lightning.
In a burst of bolts, [690]
the thunder and lightning
enfiladed the Titans
under the sweep of his steady hands.
The holy flood
flashed.
Usually the Earth gives life, but now it screamed,
set aflame. Her vast forests encircled her
with crackling fires.
The heat of the ground
boiled Ocean’s streams [695]
and boiled the sea. A plow won’t harm it,
but boiling can. Also vulnerable
to this swirling heat? The Titans.
Was not the Earth their mother? The fire climbed
up over them too, into the air. With eyes blind,
it doesn’t matter how strong you are.
And the dazzling flashes
of unbolted lightning blinded them.
So hot was the heat that it reached down
to Chaos, the womb of the Earth. [700]
If you could have seen all this
with your own eyes, or heard it with your ears,
it would have seemed just as if the Earth
and the wide Sky above
had themselves collided.
How loud the noise would be
if the Earth got slammed, fallen upon
by the Sky from above. That’s
how loud the noise was when Zeus crashed down
and clashed with the Titans. [705]
Then came the winds. They made more things shake.
They made more storms of dust.
This weather shift amplified the thunder,
augmented the lightning, the flashing bolt –
all the weapons of great Zeus.
The wind blowing this way, a path in the middle opened
for a direct assault. With a shout,
the signal was given.
The deadly charge was made.
That moment’s picture is eternal: the brave gambit, [710]
overturning the tipping point.
Up until that day, the gods had assaulted one another
indecisively, the war prolonged
by their assaults equally strong.
But on that day, the shift came,
when they stepped to the front of the charge, they,
Cottus and Briareus and Gyges,
new allies with outsized appetite for revenge.
Three hundred rocks,
under the sweep of their steady hands, [715]
poured forth in rapid succession.
Like the sudden descent of a shadow, they enfiladed
the Titans. In this Hundred-Handed shadow,
the Titans beneath the broad ground
were sent. And that is how the Titans
came to be bound below with painful bonds.
The Titans had a competitive, all-too competitive, spirit.
It took many hands to beat them.