Before this combination of terrors even the Titans could not stand. They were dashed from their battlements and fell like shooting stars nine days and nights to earth, then on down for nine days and nights more to Tartarus. Here were they bound and cast into that dismal abyss, behind a triple brazen wall built by Poseidon, around which Night is poured in three rows. And the Hundred-handed were set to guard them.
Kronos and a few others escaped to the North, and there made head for a time, sheltered against Zeus's thunderbolts in caverns of the hills. But there came to the Olympians two mighty twin Shapes, Force and Might, followed by their sister, beauteous-ankled Victory (from whose shoulders waved great eagle's wings)—all children of Styx; and those two illustrious ones announced to Zeus that henceforth they were his servants, and that their sister, Victory, would ever follow them.
So with these ministers, Zeus went forth once more; and the remainder of the Titans fled westward beyond the utmost limits of earth. But huge Atlas, brother of Prometheus, was overtaken, and him Zeus stationed on the very verge of the earth, before the clear-voiced Hesperides, sentencing him to bear forever on his shoulders the weight of the vast sky.
Having thus achieved the victory, Zeus gave to Hades dominion over the Underworld, to Poseidon the Sea, and took himself the realm of the Æther and the Earth, rewarding all those who had assisted
him, and especially honoring Styx, mother of Force, Might and Victory, so that thenceforth the most sacred and inviolable oath for an immortal was to swear by Styx.
Mother Earth was far from pleased at this outcome. Her imprisoned first-born children had been released only to have her other beautiful Titan sons and daughters take their places in Tartarus. In revenge she brought forth a brood of Giants to war with the young gods. These were huge and invincible creatures with ghastly faces and long, thick, matted hair hanging from their heads and chins; instead of feet they had scaly dragon's tails. Their birth-place was in Phlegra or Pallene. The most redoubtable among them were Porphyrion and Alcyoneus. The latter was immortal so long as he fought on the same part of the earth on which he was born, and he soon distinguished himself by carrying off the cattle of the Sun and Moon.
With these and their brethren—Enceladus, Pallas, Clytius, Polybotes, Hippolytus and others—were joined Otus and Ephialtes, children of Poseidon, who, says Homer, grew nine inches every month, and who when they were only nine years old had captured war-god Mars himself and held him prisoner more than a year.
Now the oracle revealed to the gods that the giants could be destroyed only in combat with a mortal. Gæa (Earth) had learned this, and sought by means of magic herbs to make her offspring invulnerable also to mortals.
But Zeus anticipated her: he forbade the Dawn,
the Moon and the Sun to shine, cut off the medicinal herbs with which Earth had plastered her offspring, and sent Athena to summon Heracles to take part in the combat.