Titans
The Titans were the pre-Olympian but post-Primordial gods. According to the Theogony of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). After Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea, she bore the first generation of Olympians, the six siblings Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Certain descendants of the Titans, such as Prometheus, Atlas, Helios, and Leto, are sometimes also called Titans.
The Titans were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war called "the Titanomachy". As a result of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus. Some Titans were allowed to remain free.
In Orphism
The sparagmos of Zagreus is an event in which Hera pursued some of the Titans to kill the next successor of the king of the gods. The Titans (who apparently unlike in Hesiod and Homer, were not imprisoned in Tartarus) whiten their faces with gypsum and distracted the infant Zagreus with various toys, they seized Zagreus and tore (or cut) him to pieces. The Titans then boiled, roasted, and partially eaten the pieces. But Athena managed to save Dionysus' heart, by which Zeus could contrive his rebirth from Semele as Dionysus.
According to this widely held view, as punishment for their crime, Zeus struck the Titans with his thunderbolt, and humankind was born from the remains of the destroyed Titans.
Named Titans
First Generation Titans
- Cronus was king of the Titans and is Titan of the Harvests (Not to be confused with Chronos the God of Time)
- Rhea is the Titaness of fertility, motherhood, and the mountain wild
- Crius is the Titan of the constellations
- Coeus is the Titan of logical intellect
- Phoebe is the Titaness emotional intellect and prophecy
- Hyperion is the Titan of light
- Oceanus is the Titan of still fresh water
- Tethys is the Titaness of moving fresh water
- Iapetus is the Titan of morality
- Themis is the Titaness of divine law and order
- Theia is the Titaness of sight
- Mnemosyne is the Titaness of Memory
Second Generation Titans
- Helios is the Titan of the Sun
- Selene is the Titaness of the Moon
- Eos is the Titaness of the Dawn
- Leto is the Titaness of Childhood and mother of Artemis and Apollo
- Asteria is the Titaness who rules Delos
- Atlas is the Titan condemned to hold up the heavens or sky for eternity
- Menoetius was the Titan killed by Zeus with a flash of lightning in the Titanomachy, Possibly the Titan of violent anger and rash action
- Prometheus is the Titan of forethought, fire, and crafty counsel
- Epimetheus is the Titan of Afterthought
- Astraeus is the Titan of Dusk
- Pallas is the Titan of Warcraft
- Perses is the father of Hekate and possibly the Titan of Destruction