Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lambin. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time,
Speaker 2: and the gods, givers of good things, applauded when they
Speaker 2: heard his word, and their spirit longed for war even
Speaker 2: more than before. And they all, both male and female,
Speaker 2: stirred up hated battle that day, the Titan gods and
Speaker 2: all that were born of Cronos, together with those dread
Speaker 2: mighty ones of overwhelming strength, whom Zeus brought up to
Speaker 2: the light from Erebus beneath the earth, A hundred arms
Speaker 2: sprang from the shoulders of all alike, and each had
Speaker 2: fifty heads growing upon his shoulders, upon stout limbs. These
Speaker 2: then stood against the Titans in grim strife, holding huge
Speaker 2: rocks in their strong hands. These are the words of
Speaker 2: Hesiod from his eighth century BCE text Theogony, here in
Speaker 2: translation by Evelyn White, describing the one hundred handed warriors
Speaker 2: the hecatonkyaries of Greek mythology. Naturally, the poet Hesiod compiled
Speaker 2: various tellings and traditions in his poetry, and in doing so,
Speaker 2: solidified a number of characters, relationships, and tales concerning the
Speaker 2: Greek pantheon of deities. So what we read here is
Speaker 2: effectively the most popular understanding of the Hecatonkers. They were
Speaker 2: a very ancient race of multi headed and multi handed giants,
Speaker 2: and they stood among the various children of the primordial
Speaker 2: sky god Urunas. But Urunas hated these monstrosities from the
Speaker 2: first and imprisoned them, locking them away out of sight. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Urunas's offspring, Chronos, rises against his father, overthrows him, but
Speaker 2: seemingly keeps these earlier unsightly offspring locked away. It is
Speaker 2: not until Zeus, the child of Cronos, rises up with
Speaker 2: his fellow Olympian gods, rebels against the Titans. They free
Speaker 2: and recruit the Hecatonkyres, as well as their kin, the Cyclopses,
Speaker 2: into their ensuing war for control of the cosmos. This
Speaker 2: was the Titanomachi, and Hesiod describes their role in its battles,
Speaker 2: naming the three most prominent of the one hundred handed
Speaker 2: warriors in surviving traditions, and amongst the foremost Cotis and Bryarias,
Speaker 2: and guys insatiate for war, raised fierce, fighting three hundred
Speaker 2: rocks one upon another. They launched from their strong hands
Speaker 2: and overshadowed the Titans with their missiles, and buried them
Speaker 2: beneath the wide pathed earth, and bound them in bitter chains.
Speaker 2: When they had conquered them by their strength, for all
Speaker 2: their great spirit, as far beneath the earth to Tartarus.
Speaker 2: The Hecatonkyres, according to Hesiod, are much more than allies
Speaker 2: of the gods. In their war against the Titans, the
Speaker 2: Hecatonqueries strike the final blow. They chain the Titans. They
Speaker 2: become the wardens of the Titans, and are quite ironically
Speaker 2: imprisoned once more in the process. Now it should be
Speaker 2: noted that in some traditions the Hecatonkures may have fought
Speaker 2: instead on the side of the Titans, and in some compilations,
Speaker 2: such as Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the authors
Speaker 2: go so far as to describe individuals, specifically Bryarius as
Speaker 2: a Titan. So it gets a bit confusing at times.
Speaker 2: And I suppose that's how I have always felt about
Speaker 2: the Hecatonquary since I was a child and read about them,
Speaker 2: and various books, somewhat confused because the morphologies of so
Speaker 2: many other Greek monsters are just so well defined, there's
Speaker 2: so many illustrations of them. As a child, you can
Speaker 2: draw them, you can roughly sketch them yourself, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. But the hecatonquerris always seem to
Speaker 2: defy logic. Their name feels more like a literary concept
Speaker 2: describing a force of nature as opposed to a codified creature,
Speaker 2: and indeed this is often how they are interpreted. They
Speaker 2: are difficult to envision or to reproduce visually, and certainly
Speaker 2: there are plenty of contemporary artists who have had a
Speaker 2: lot of fun producing various surreal and just horrifying interpretations
Speaker 2: of the hecatonqures, but one is generally hard pressed to
Speaker 2: find representations of these creatures in art history. Now I
Speaker 2: invite correction on this front, because I would very much
Speaker 2: love to see such images, to see like classical illustrations,
Speaker 2: medieval illustrations and so forth, all of the hecatonqures. But
Speaker 2: my searches have generally come up well empty handed. Perhaps
Speaker 2: we've simply lost ancient Greek depictions of these creatures. I
Speaker 2: can only assume that they were too far removed from
Speaker 2: actual human physiology to interest many sculptors. You know, I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're interested in capturing the reality of the human form,
Speaker 2: even in the telling of stories and the presentation of
Speaker 2: information about deities, then this might not be your first stop.
Speaker 2: Perhaps they were creature's best left for depiction in the
Speaker 2: ages of surrealism and cosmic horror to come. Indeed, outside
Speaker 2: of their role in the struggle against the Titans, little
Speaker 2: seems to have survived about the Hecatonqures in general, aside
Speaker 2: from some tangents concerning Bryarius. Again, the Hecatonquyres are perhaps
Speaker 2: best interpreted as embodiments of natural forces. Given their hundred
Speaker 2: hands and heads, they are like armies of men compiled
Speaker 2: into a single grade entity, like a storm or earthquake,
Speaker 2: with the power of an army. As such, turning to
Speaker 2: the natural world of biology, our best example of hundred
Speaker 2: headed entities are actually large groups working together, such as
Speaker 2: humans or use social insects. Now, some of you out
Speaker 2: there might be thinking to yourself, well, I know what
Speaker 2: has one hundred appendages. Well, even centipedes, despite their name
Speaker 2: which means one hundred footed, never have exactly one hundred limbs.
Speaker 2: They may have as few as something like twenty three
Speaker 2: leg bearing segments, or as many as I think one
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety one, but there is always an odd
Speaker 2: number of leg bearing segments, never the even fifty segments
Speaker 2: that would produce a total of one hundred legs. By
Speaker 2: the way, the first millipede with more than a thousand
Speaker 2: legs wasn't discovered till twenty twenty one. Now, despite this disappointment,
Speaker 2: scientists have fouled room to invoke the hecatonkures in the
Speaker 2: naming of various organisms. Specifically, the name Bryarius is invoked
Speaker 2: in the scientific name for various organisms, including, but not
Speaker 2: limited to, the Caribbean reef octopus, the hairy c cucumber,
Speaker 2: at least one species of sea star, the quirky seafinger, coral,
Speaker 2: a sea slug, an extinct trilabite, and a Central American moth.
Speaker 2: As for their mythic namesake, the hecatonkyres, well, maybe we
Speaker 2: should heed the words of Hesiod once more. Perhaps we
Speaker 2: lack for older depictions of the creature because they are
Speaker 2: not to be approached, They are not to be looked upon,
Speaker 2: even Uruanas chose not to do so, and he used
Speaker 2: to hide them all away in a secret place of
Speaker 2: earth so soon as each was born, and would not
Speaker 2: suffer them to come up into the light. And Heaven
Speaker 2: rejoiced in his evil doing, but vast earth groaned within.
Speaker 2: Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster, Fact, The Artifact,
Speaker 2: or Anamalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can email
Speaker 2: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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