strong candidate for Indo-European status.^65 One-eyed giants also occur in
Irish and Lithuanian tales.^66
Hesiod (Th. 185) associates the birth of ‘the great Gigantes’ with that of the
tree nymphs and the Erinyes, all sprung from the drops of blood that fell on
the earth when Ouranos was castrated by Kronos. The Gigantes’ bellicose
nature was at once apparent, as they were in shining armour and brandishing
spears. In the Odyssey (7. 59, 206) they are mentioned as an uncivilized and
overbearing folk who belong to the same world as the Cyclopes and the
peace-loving Phaeacians, dwelling somewhere in the outer regions of the
earth (cf. 6. 4 f.). Later sources refer to their conflict with the gods, in which
Heracles’ assistance gave the gods the victory.
There are others in Greek epic myth besides the Gigantes that we must class
as giants: the Cyclopes, who for Hesiod are the artificers of Zeus’ thunder; the
Hundred-Handers, who assisted the Olympians against the Titans (Hes. Th.
147–53, 617–75, 713–35); and the Laestrygones, who lived far away, close to
the paths of Night and Day, and were ‘not like men but like Gigantes’ (Od. 10.
86, 120). One thing that unites these three groups, apart from their body
mass, is that they all hurl huge boulders. Polyphemus hurls a couple at
Odysseus’ departing ship; the Laestrygonians hurl a large number down on
the ships moored in their harbour; and it is with a hail of mighty rocks that
the Hundred-Handers overwhelm the Titans. At Cyzicus in the Propontis
there was a local legend that the massive stone blocks which formed the wall
of one of the harbours had been thrown there by six-armed giants from the
hills (Ap. Rhod. 1. 942–5, 989–1002).
The motif appears also in Ossetic, Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic tradition. A
group of Narts on a long expedition, overtaken by night, bed down in what
they take to be a cave. In the morning they find that it was the shoulderblade
(or in another version the skull) of an enormous giant from a past age. They
pray to God for the owner of the skeleton to come back to life, only blind so
that he cannot harm them. The prayer is granted. The Narts enquire of the
resuscitated ogre how the giants used to compete with one another. He invites
one of them to stand on one side of the valley, and he will throw a rock at him
from the other side. Soslan sets his cloak on the hillside, shouts that he is
ready, and makes himself scarce. The blind giant hurls a large rock at the voice
(^65) Cf. D. L. Page, The Homeric Odyssey (Oxford 1955), 1–20; id., Folktales in Homer’s Odyssey
(Cambridge Mass. 1973), 23–48; J. Glenn, TA PA 102 (1971), 133–81; R. Mondi, ibid. 113 (1983),
17–38; J. N. O’Sullivan, Symbolae Osloenses 62 (1987), 5–24.
(^66) Dillon (1948), 46 n. 19; O’Rahilly (1946), 330 f. (the Polyphemus theme); Greimas (1992),
- Grimm (1883–8), 1440, refers to a Norwegian folk-tale in which three trolls share a single
eye, just like the Greek Graiai. Here one may suspect direct Classical influence, perhaps from
Ov. Met. 4. 775.
298 7. Nymphs and Gnomes