Hecatoncheires

Meaning

Noun

• Three monstrous giants of enormous size and strength, each with fifty heads and one hundred arms, who were offspring of Uranus by Gaia, whom Zeus freed from captivity and who in return aided the Olympians in the Titanomachy.

Related

Similar words

• Centimanes, Hundred-Handers

Origin

• From ἑκᾰτόν + χείρ. Compare the adjective ἑκατόγχειρος.
• The putative Ἑκατόγχειρες is unattested in Hesiod's Theogony, which instead describes the giants with the phrase ἑκατὸν μὲν χεῖρες.
• 1914, Hugh G. Evelyn-White (translator), Hesiod, Theogonia, Bibliotheca Polyglotta, ,
  τῶν ἑκατὸν μὲν χεῖρες ἀπ’ ὤμων ἀίσσοντο, ἄπλαστοι, κεφαλαὶ δὲ ἑκάστῳ πεντήκοντα ἐξ ὤμων ἐπέφυκον ἐπὶ στιβαροῖσι μέλεσσιν· ἰσχὺς δ’ ἄπλητος κρατερὴ μεγάλῳ ἐπὶ εἴδει.
  —From their shoulders sprang an hundred arms, not to be approached, and each had fifty heads upon his shoulders on their strong limbs, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms.