Tityos or Tityus (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: Τιτυός) was a

giant In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''wiktionary:gigas, gigas'', cognate wiktionary:giga-, giga-) are beings of humanoid appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''gia ...

from

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

Family

Tityos was the son of the mortal princess Elara and the god

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

. He had a daughter named Europa who coupled with Poseidon and gave birth to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts.

Mythology

Zeus hid Elara from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. Tityos grew so large that he split his mother's womb, and he was carried to term by Gaia, the Earth. Once grown, Tityos attempted to rape

Leto In ancient Greek mythology and Ancient Greek religion, religion, Leto (; ) is a childhood goddess, the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe (Titaness), Phoebe, the sister of Asteria, and the mother of Apollo and Artemis.Hesiod, ''Theogony' ...

at the behest of Hera. He was slain by Leto's protective children

Artemis In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Artemis (; ) is the goddess of the hunting, hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, transitions, nature, vegetation, childbirth, Kourotrophos, care of children, and chastity. In later tim ...

and

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

. In some accounts, Tityus was instead slain by the thunderbolt of his father Zeus. Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 55 As punishment, he was stretched out in Tartarus and tortured by two vultures who fed on his liver, which grew back every night. This punishment is comparable to that of the Titan Prometheus. Jane Ellen Harrison noted that "to the orthodox worshiper of the Olympians he was the vilest of criminals; as such Homer knew him": Michelangelo Buonarroti - Tityus - WGA15503

Michelangelo Buonarroti - Tityus - WGA15503

In the early first century, when the geographer

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

visited Panopeus, he was reminded by the local people that it was the abode of Tityos and recalled the fact that the

Phaeacia Scheria or Scherie (; or ), also known as Phaeacia () or Faiakia, was a region in Greek mythology, first mentioned in Homer's '' Odyssey'' as the home of the Phaeacians and the last destination of Odysseus in his 10-year journey before returning ...

ns had carried Rhadamanthus in their boats to visit Tityos, according to Homer. There on Euboea at the time of Strabo they were still showing a "cave called Elarion from Elara who was mother to Tityos, and a hero-shrine of Tityos, and some kind of honours are mentioned which are paid him." It is clear that the local hero-cult had been superseded by the cult of the Olympian gods, an Olympian father provided, and the hero demonized. A comparable giant chthonic pre-Olympian of a Titan-like order is Orion. The poet

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( ; ; – October 15, 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem '' De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, which usually is t ...

, in ''

De rerum natura (; ''On the Nature of Things'') is a first-century BC Didacticism, didactic poem by the Roman Republic, Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius () with the goal of explaining Epicureanism, Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, writte ...

'' (Book III, lines 978–998), provides a demythologized Tityos who is "the prototypical anguished lover," eternally punished not in the underworld, but here and now, by a plague not of vultures but of cupids.

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

briefly depicts Tityos' torments in Book VI of his ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...

''. Hamilton (1993) suggests that Virgil's description of Tityos' agony and unrest contains a "verbal echo" of the lovesick Dido's unrest in Book IV, indicating that Virgil's Tityos, while "remythologized," remains indebted to Lucretius's. Virgil is the first to depict Tityos tormented by a single vulture instead of Homer's two, "perhaps due to contamination with the story of Prometheus." Notes on 1.3.75–76. Among Roman writers,

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

and Claudian follow Virgil in depicting a singular vulture; Ovid and Seneca vary from work to work; Propertius and Statius depict more than one vulture. The traveler Pausanias (2nd century A.D.) reports seeing a painting by Polygnotus at Delphi that depicts Tityos among other figures being tormented in Hades for sacrilege: "Tityos too is in the picture; he is no longer being punished, but has been reduced to nothing by continuous torture, an indistinct and mutilated phantom." Pausanias, 10.29.3: ''γέγραπται δὲ καὶ Τιτυὸς οὐ κολαζόμενος ἔτι, ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ συνεχοῦς τῆς τιμωρίας ἐς ἅπαν ἐξανηλωμένος, ἀμυδρὸν καὶ οὐδὲ ὁλόκληρον εἴδωλον''.

Postclassical references

Tityos is mentioned in Dante Alighieri's '' Inferno'' as among the biblical and mythological giants frozen onto the rings outside of Hell's Circle of Treachery. Dante and Virgil threaten to go to Tityos and Typhon if Antaeus doesn't lower them into the Circle of Treachery. Jusepe de Ribera's painting '' Tityos'' (1632) depicts a vulture feeding on the left side of Tityos' body (despite that the human

liver The liver is a major metabolic organ (anatomy), organ exclusively found in vertebrates, which performs many essential biological Function (biology), functions such as detoxification of the organism, and the Protein biosynthesis, synthesis of var ...

is located on the right side of the body).

Citations

General and cited references

* ''Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 14'', Sym–Tub, editors: Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2009.
Online version at Brill
* Harrison, Jane Ellen. ''Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion''. (1903), 1922, p. 336f. * Hard, Robin, ''The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H. J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology"'', Psychology Press, 2004.
Google Books
*

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

, ''The Odyssey'' with an English Translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.Greek text available from the same website
* Hyginus, ''Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus'' translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
* Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' with an English Translation by W. H. S. Jones, Litt.D., and H. A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Pausanias, ''Graeciae Descriptio.'' ''3 vols''. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903
Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library
* Smith, William. '' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', London (1873)
"Ti'tyus"

External links

{{Authority control Characters in Book VI of the Aeneid Children of Zeus Condemned souls in Tartarus Deeds of Apollo Deeds of Artemis Deeds of Hera Deeds of Zeus Greek giants Leto