[German version]

(Ἑκατόγχειρες, centimani = ‘hundred-handed’). Briareus (also called Aegaeon: Hom. Il. 1,403f.), Cottus and Gy(g)es (for the name forms see [1]) are powerful monsters (hundred arms, fifty heads: Hes. Theog. 147ff.), offspring of  Uranus and  Gaia. They were chained by their father and thrown into Tartarus (617ff.). Zeus frees them and, on account of their hundred arms, makes them allies in the battle with the  Titans (626ff.). The belief that the H. later guarded the defeated Titans in Tartarus (Apollod. 1,2,7) is probably due to a misinterpret…