Aloadae

"Ephialtes (giant)" and "Otos" redirect here. For the Spanish municipality, see Otos, Valencia.

Aloadae
Twin giants of Thessaly
Member of the Thessalian Royal Family
Titans and Giants, including Ephialtes on the left, in Gustave Doré's illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy.
Other names	Aloads includes: Otus (Otos) and Ephialtes
Abode	Thessaly
Genealogy
Parents	Poseidon or Aloeus (father) Iphimedeia (mother)
Siblings	Pancratis (Pancrato), Elate, Platanus

In Greek mythology, the Aloadae (/ˌæloʊˈeɪdiː/) or Aloads (Ancient Greek: Ἀλωάδαι Aloadai) were Otus or Otos (Ὦτος means "insatiate") and Ephialtes (Ἐφιάλτης "nightmare"),^[1] Thessalian sons of Princess Iphimedia, wife of Aloeus, by Poseidon,^[2] whom she induced to make her pregnant by going to the seashore and disporting herself in the surf or scooping seawater into her bosom.^[3] From Aloeus, sometimes their real father, they received their patronymic, the Aloadae. They had a sister Pancratis (Pancrato) who was renowned for her great beauty.^[4]

Mythology

The Aloads were strong and aggressive giants, growing by nine fingers every month. Nine fathoms tall aged nine, they were only outshone in beauty by Orion.^[5][6]

War with the gods

The brothers wanted to storm Mount Olympus and gain Artemis for Otus^[7] and Hera for Ephialtes. Their plan - the construction of a pile of mountains atop which they would confront the gods - is described differently by different authors (including Homer, Virgil,^[8] and Ovid), and occasionally changed by translators. Mount Olympus is usually said to be the bottom mountain, with Mounts Ossa and Pelion upon Ossa as second and third, either respectively or vice versa.^[9] Homer says that the Aloadae were killed by Apollo before they had any beards,^[10] consistent with their being bound to columns in the Underworld by snakes, with the nymph of the Styx in the form of an owl over them.^[11]

According to another version of their struggle against the Olympians, alluded to so briefly^[12][13] that it must have been already familiar to the epic's hearers, they managed to kidnap Ares and hold him in a bronze jar, a storage pithos, for thirteen months (a lunar year).

"And that would have been the end of Ares and his appetite for war, if the beautiful Eriboea, the young giants' stepmother, had not told Hermes what they had done", Dione related.^[14]

Alerted by Eriboea, Hermes rescued Ares.^[15]

The brothers died on the island of Naxos,^[16] when Artemis changed herself into a doe and jumped between them. The Aloadae, not wanting her to get away, threw their spears and simultaneously killed each other.^[17][18] In another version, either Apollo killed the Aloadae in their attempt to scale the mountains to the heavens, or Otus tried to rape Artemis, and Apollo sent the deer in their midst, provoking their deaths.^[15][19]

Their two sisters, Elate and Platanus, mourned their deaths so much they were changed into trees, a fir and a plane tree respectively.^[20]

Other stories

According to Diodorus, the Aloadae are Thessalian heroes who were sent out by their father Aloeus to fetch back their mother Iphimedeia and their sister Pancratis, who had been carried off by Thracians. After having overtaken and defeated the Thracians in the island of Strongyle (Naxos), they settled there as rulers over the Thracians. But soon after, they killed each other in a dispute which had arisen between them, and the Naxians worshiped them as heroes.^[21]

In all these traditions, the Aloadae were represented as only remarkable for their gigantic physical strength; but there was another story which placed them in a different light. Pausanias related that they were believed to have been the first of all men who worshiped the Muses on Mount Helicon, and to have consecrated this mountain to them; but they worshiped only three Muses — Melete, Mneme and Aoede.^[22] They were bringers of civilization, founding the cities and teaching culture to humanity. They were venerated specifically in Naxos and Boeotian Ascra, two cities they founded.^[23] Besides these two, the foundation of the town of Aloïum in Thessaly was ascribed to them.^[24]

Ephialtes (lit. "he who jumps upon") is also the Greek word for "nightmare",^[25] and Ephialtes was sometimes considered the daimon of nightmares. In the Inferno of Dante's Divine Comedy Ephialtes is one of six giants placed in the great pit that separates the eighth and ninth circles of Hell, Fraud and Cocytus, respectively. He is chained as punishment for challenging Jupiter.

Paleontology

Otozoum, the ichnogenus of sauropodomorph dinosaur, was named after Otus.^[26]

Notes

1. Beekes, Robert S. P. (2009). Etymological Dictionary of Greek. Brill Academic Publishers. p. 487. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4.
2. Homer, Odyssey 11.305–8
3. Apollodorus, 1.7.4
4. Diodorus Siculus, 5.51.1–2; Parthenius, Erotica Pathemata 19 with the 2nd book of the Naxiaca of Andriscus as the source
5. Homer, Odyssey 11.310–312; Hyginus, Fabulae 28; Kerényi, 1951:154
6. Schmitz, Leonhard (1867). "Aloeidae". In William Smith (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 132–133.
7. Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 264
8. Virgil, Aeneid 6.582
9. Homer, Odyssey 11.313–318
10. Homer, Odyssey 11.319–320 - "[...] the son of Zeus, whom fair-haired Leto bore, slew them both before the down blossomed beneath their temples and covered their chins with a full growth of beard."
11. Hyginus, Fabulae 28
12. It is related in the Iliad by the goddess Dione to her daughter Aphrodite
13. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.1.1
14. Homer, Iliad 5.385–391
15. Roman, L., & Roman, M. (2010). Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology , p. 55, at Google Books
16. Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.88–89
17. Hamilton, Edith (1942). Mythology. New York: Grand Central Publishing. p. 144.
18. This mytheme, of the brothers' mutual murder, features in the myth of the mutual killings of Eteocles and Polynices that occurs in the war of the Seven against Thebes (as recounted for example in Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes).
19. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.482–484
20. Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy (1981). Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress. University of California Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-520-09632-0.
21. Diodorus Siculus, 5.51.1–2
22. Pausanias, 9.29.2
23. Pausanias, 9.29.1
24. Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Aloion
25. Liddel, H.G. & Scott, R. A Greek–English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford, 1940), s.v. ἐφιάλτης Archived 2019-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
26. Hitchcock, Edward, 1847, "Description of two new species of fossil footmarks found in Massachusetts and Connecticut, or of the animals that made them", American Journal of Science and Arts Series 2, 4(3): 46-57

References

• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Gaius Julius 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.
• Homer, 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. ISBN 978-0674995611. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Kerenyi, Karl (1951). The Gods of the Greeks. pp. 153ff.
• 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. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

External links

• Media related to Aloadae at Wikimedia Commons