Hecatoncheires

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English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ἑκᾰτόν (hekatón, “hundred”) +‎ χείρ (kheír, “hand”), compare the adjective ἑκατόγχειρος (hekatónkheiros, “hundred-handed”). The putative *Ἑκατόγχειρες (*Hekatónkheires) is unattested in Hesiod's Theogony, which instead describes the giants with the phrase ἑκατὸν μὲν χεῖρες (hekatòn mèn kheîres).[1]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˌhɛkətɒŋˈkaɪɹiːz/

Noun

Hecatoncheires pl (plural only)

  1. (Greek mythology) Three monstrous giants of enormous size and strength, each with fifty heads and one hundred arms, who were offspring of Uranus by Gaia, whom Zeus freed from captivity and who in return aided the Olympians in the Titanomachy.
    Synonyms: Centimanes, Hundred-Handers
    The three Hecatoncheires were named Cottus, Briareus (or Aegaeon) and Gyges (or Gyes).
    • 1840, George Cornewall Lewis (translator), John William Donaldson (translator, later chapters), Karl Otfried Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece: To the Period of Isocrates, Robert Baldwin, page 92,
      […] nor is it until the poet has related how Zeus set free these Hecatoncheires, by the advice of the Earth, that we are introduced to the battle with the Titans, which has already been some time going on.
    • 1973, James Weigel, James L. Roberts, Mythology, CliffsNotes, page 50:
      But then Zeus went down to Tartarus and released the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed monsters. The Cyclopes awarded Zeus their weapons of thunder and lightning, and the Hecatoncheires pelted the Titans with boulders.
    • 1993, Tim Parks (translator), Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, [1988, R. Calasso, Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia], Random House (Vintage), page 202,
      By this time many beings had spread out across space, both on high and below: the Titans, the Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires.

Translations

References

  1. ^ Hesiod (1914) Hugh G. Evelyn-White, transl., Theogonia‎[1], line 150: “τῶν ἑκατὸν μὲν χεῖρες ἀπ’ ὤμων ἀίσσοντο, ἄπλαστοι, κεφαλαὶ δὲ ἑκάστῳ πεντήκοντα ἐξ ὤμων ἐπέφυκον ἐπὶ στιβαροῖσι μέλεσσιν· ἰσχὺς δ’ ἄπλητος κρατερὴ μεγάλῳ ἐπὶ εἴδει. ― From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms.”

Further reading

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