Briareos

Also known as: Briar / Briareus / Obriareus · Family: Hundred-handed · Role: hundred-handed one · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 1.1

In Apollodorus, Sky and Earth were Briareos’s parents, and he was one of the Hundred-handed, with a hundred hands and fifty heads. Sky bound and cast Briareos, Gyes, Cottus, and the Cyclopes into Tartarus: “But them Sky bound and cast into Tartarus.” After Cronus dethroned Sky, he freed them and entrusted sovereignty to himself, then bound them again in Tartarus.

In Hesiod, Briareos was born with Cottus and Gyes to Earth and Heaven, but Heaven hated them and hid them beneath Earth. Bound there by their father, they were later brought back into the light at Earth’s advice by Zeus and the other gods, joining Zeus and his allies against the Titans. Briareos, Cottus, and Gyes conquered and bound the Titans beneath Earth.

Afterward, Briareos became a guardian of Zeus, living with Gyes and Cottus as “trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis.” Poseidon made Briareos his son-in-law by giving him Cymopolea in marriage.