Cottus, the eldest of the giants, answered, “Divine One, through your
devising we are come back again from the murky gloom of the mid Earth and
we have escaped from the hard bonds that Cronus laid upon us. Our minds
are fixed to aid you in the war against the Titan gods.”
So the hundred-armed giants said, and thereupon Zeus went and he
gathered around him all who were born of Cronos and Rhea. Cronos himself
hid from Zeus. Then the giants, with their fifty heads growing from their
shoulders and their hundred hands, went forth against the Titan gods. The
boundless sea rang terribly and the earth crashed loudly; wide Heaven was
shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation. Holding
huge rocks in their hands the giants attacked the Titan gods.
Then Zeus entered the war. He hurled the lightning; the bolts flew thick
and fast from his strong hand, with thunder and lightning and flame. The
earth crashed around in burning, the forests crackled with fire, the ocean
seethed. And hot flames wrapped the earth-born Titans all around. Three
hundred rocks, one upon another, did Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes hurl upon
the Titans. And when their ranks were broken the giants seized upon them
and held them for Zeus.
But some of the Titan gods, seeing that the strife for them was vain,
went over to the side of Zeus. These Zeus became friendly with. But the
other Titans he bound in chains and he hurled them down to Tartarus.
As far as Earth is from Heaven so is Tartarus from Earth. A brazen anvil
falling down from Heaven to Earth nine days and nine nights would reach
the earth upon the tenth day. And again, a brazen anvil falling from Earth
nine nights and nine days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth night.
Around Tartarus runs a fence of bronze and Night spreads in a triple line
all about it, as a necklace circles the neck. There Zeus imprisoned the
Titan gods who had fought against him; they are hidden in the misty gloom,
in a dank place, at the ends of the Earth. And they may not go out, for
Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon their prison, and a wall runs all
round it. There Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes stay, guarding them.
And there, too, is the home of Night. Night and Day meet each other at
that place, as they pass a threshold of bronze. They draw near and they
greet one another, but the house never holds them both together, for while
one is about to go down into the house, the other is leaving through the
door. One holds Light in her hand and the other holds in her arms Sleep.
There the children of dark Night have their dwellings—Sleep, and Death,
his brother. The sun never shines upon these two. Sleep may roam over the
wide earth, and come upon the sea, and he is kindly to men. But Death is
not kindly, and whoever he seizes upon, him he holds fast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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