Giants. In Greek and Roman Mythology, the Giants, also called Gigantes, were a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size, known for the Gigantomachy, their battle with the Olympian gods. According to Hesiod, the Giants were the offspring of Gaia, born from the blood that fell when Uranus was castrated by his Titan son Cronus. Archaic and Classical representations show Gigantes as man-sized hoplites fully human in form. Later representations show Gigantes with snakes for legs. In later traditions, the Giants were often confused with other opponents of the Olympians, particularly the Titans, an earlier generation of large and powerful children of Gaia and Uranus. The vanquished Giants were said to be buried under volcanoes and to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The name Gigantes is usually taken to imply earth-born, and Hesiod's Theogony makes this explicit by having the Giants be the offspring of Gaia. According to Hesiod, Gaia, mating with Uranus, bore many children: the first generation of Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. But Uranus hated his children and, as soon as they were born, he imprisoned them inside of Gaia, causing her much distress. And so Gaia made a sickle of adamant which she gave to Cronus, the youngest of her Titan sons, and hid him to wait in ambush. And when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus castrated his father, and the bloody drops that gushed forth received, and as the seasons moved round she bore. the great Giants. From these same drops of blood also came the Erinyes and the Meliai, while the severed genitals of Uranus falling into the sea resulted in a white foam from which Aphrodite grew. The mythographer Apollodorus also has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, though he makes no connection with Uranus' castration, saying simply that Gaia vexed on account of the Titans, brought forth the Giants. There are three brief references to the Gigantes in Homer's Odyssey, though it's not entirely clear that Homer and Hesiod understood the term to mean the same thing. Homer has Giants among the ancestors of the Phaiakians, a race of men encountered by Odysseus, their ruler Alcinous being the son of Nausithous, who was the son of Poseidon and Periboea, the daughter of the Giant king Eurymedon. Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Alcinous says that the Phaiakians, like the Cyclopes and the Giants, are near kin to the gods. Odysseus describes the Laestrygonians as more like Giants than men. Pausanias, the 2nd century AD geographer, read these lines of the Odyssey to mean that, for Homer, the Giants were a race of mortal men. The 6th-5th century BC lyric poet Bacchylides calls the Giants sons of the Earth. Later the term gegeneis became a common epithet of the Giants. The first century Latin writer Hyginus has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, another primordial Greek deity. Though distinct in early traditions, Hellenistic and later writers often confused or conflated the Giants and their Gigantomachy, with an earlier set of offspring of Gaia and Uranus, the Titans and their war with the Olympian gods, the Titanomachy. This confusion extended to other opponents of the Olympians, including the huge monster Typhon, the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, whom Zeus finally defeated with his thunderbolt, and the Aloadae, the large, strong and aggressive brothers Otus and Ephialtes, who piled Pelion on top of Ossa in order to scale the heavens and attack the Olympians. For example, Hyginus includes the names of three Titans, Coeus, Iapetus, and Astraeus, along with Typhon and the Aloadae, in his list of Giants, and Ovid seems to conflate the Gigantomachy with the later siege of Olympus by the Aloadae. Ovid also seems to confuse the Hundred-Handers with the Giants, whom he gives a hundred arms. So perhaps do Callimachus and Philostratus, since they both make Aegaeon the cause of earthquakes, as was often said about the Giants. Homer describes the Giant king Eurymedon as great-hearted, and his people as insolent and froward. Hesiod calls the Giants strong and great which may or may not be a reference to their size. Though a possible later addition, the Theogony also has the Giants born with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands. Other early sources characterize the Giants by their excesses. Pindar describes the excessive violence of the Giant Porphyrion as having provoked beyond all measure. Bacchylides calls the Giants arrogant, saying that they were destroyed by Hybris.