Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today’s video, we’re going to discuss the
one weapon that, had the Titans used it, would have vanquished the gods.
Let’s get into it.
As we know, the titans were defeated by the gods, but this wasn’t achieved through the
power of the gods alone. The cyclopes crafted the gods' awesome weapons - the thunderbolt for Zeus,
the helm of darkness for Hades, and a trident that could shake and sunder the earth for Poseidon.
The gods were also reinforced by the Hecatonchires, towering hundred-armed
behemoths with irresistible strength. The titans, on the other hand, while incredibly
powerful in their own right - they, too, were gods after all - weren’t bolstered in the same way.
No colossal monsters, unassailable in strength and unsurpassed in size, bolstered their forces,
no magnificent cyclops-forged weapons boosted the combative abilities of any of their number.
But what if their situation had been different? What if there was a weapon
that could have augmented their power, and would this have turned the tide of the war?
In this video, we’re going to discuss the Ophiotaurus, a monster and a somewhat esoteric
bit of Greek mythology. Spawned by Gaia, the front half was that of a bull and where the hindquarters
should have been was the tail of a snake. The mere fact that it was alive posed an ever-present,
existential threat to the Olympians. Supposedly, if its entrails were burned,
the person or group that enacted this right became endowed with the power to defeat the gods,
a great boon that the Titans were in dire need of, one that would have given them surety of victory.
Before we really dive into the Ophiotaurus,
we’re going to set the stage by giving an overview of the events that lead up to the Titanomachy,
the cataclysmic 10-year war between the gods and the titans, in case anyone watching is
unfamiliar with them. If this is a part of Greek mythology you already know or just
don’t want to hear again, feel free to use the time stamps in the description and skip ahead.
In the beginning, there was chaos, the great void. From it came the first generation of
primordial deities. One of these was Gaia, the personification of the earth.
She independently produced three offspring, three second generation primordial deities. They were
Ourea, the mountains, Pontus, the sea, and Uranus, the sky, whom Gaia took as her consort. Together
they had many children: the three Hecatonchires, Hundred-Handers, the three cyclopes, one-eyed
giants, and the 12 first-generation titans. Uranus found his six oldest children, the Hecatonchires
and the Cyclopes, to be repulsive, so he kept them trapped deep inside the earth, imprisoning them.
Having her children immured inside of her was a source of great pain for Gaia,
so she beseeched the Titans to champion her by overthrowing Uranus, their father. Cronus,
the youngest of the titans, and the most ambitious and audacious, came to his mother’s aid,
though his intentions weren’t purely altruistic - after all, the crown of creation was up for grabs.
He lay in wait, a sickle of grey adamant in hand, and he ambushed Uranus, castrating him, then
tossing the severed genitals into the sea. Thus he supplanted his father, and a new age began,
the age of Titan rule. The Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes were freed, but their time
in the sun would prove ephemeral, for Cronus quickly reimprisoned them in Tartarus. Later,
Gaia and Uranus prophesied to Cronus that he was destined to be supplanted by one of his children
as he himself had supplanted his father. In an effort to forestall this eventuality, Cronus
swallowed each of his children as they were born. He sired the first six Olympian gods - Hestia,
Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus - and one by one he imprisoned them inside himself - that
is, with the exception of Zeus. The Titan Rea, Cronus’ consort, became more grief-stricken with
each child she lost. She couldn’t bear to have her youngest child taken like all the others,
so she swaddled a stone in baby’s wrappings and proffered it to Cronus in Zeus’ stead. Cronus
swallowed the stone and, with that act, thought he had preempted the inexorable words of prophecy.
However, unbeknownst to him, Zeus had been whisked away and was being raised in secret. Years later,
when Zeus was fully grown, he came out of hiding and rescued his siblings by forcing Cronus to
disgorge them, beginning the Titanomachy. During the 10 years the gods and the Titans were at war,
Zeus freed the Hecatonchires and the cyclopes from Tartarus. Both trios joined the gods and, working
in concert, combined into an overwhelming force that even the Titans couldn’t withstand, that made
the Titans in desperate need of an advantage to tip the balance of power in their favour.
With the preliminaries covered, Let’s get back to the Ophiotaurus.
From what I’ve read, there seems to only be one source that mentions the Ophiotaurus,
which is Fasti, the last major work written by the Roman Poet Ovid after he was banished to the
Black Sea city of Tomis by Emperor Augustus. The book gives an account of the Roman year and of its
many religious festivals. It comprises 12 books, one corresponding to each month of the year,
but only the first six books endured the passing of the centuries and still exist today.
Here’s the quote from the book: “The Kite star Milvus turns down Lycaonian Arctos;
on this night it comes into view. If you want to know what bestowed heaven on that bird:
Saturnus was thrust from his realm by Jove. In anger he stirs the mighty Titans to arms
and seeks the assistance owed by the Fates. There was a shocking monster born of Mother Earth,
a bull, whose back half was a serpent. Roaring Styx imprisoned it, warned by the three Fates,
in a black grove within a triple wall, whoever fed the bull’s guts to consuming flames
was destined to defeat the eternal gods. Briareus slays it with an adamantine ax
and prepares to feed the flames it innards. Jupiter commands the birds to grab them;
the kite brought them to him and reached the stars on merit.”
This quote describes how a kite - a medium-sized bird of prey - became
set in the sky amongst the stars. It says that Saturnus, the Latin version of Saturn,
whom the Romans equated with the Titan Cronus, was cast down by Jove, another name for Jupiter,
the Roman equivalent for Zeus. Cronus galvanized the titans and then turned to the fates,
by whom he was purportedly owed assistance. A monster, the Ophiotaurus was imprisoned by the
goddess Styx in a black grove protected by a triple wall - probably meaning Tartarus,
which was described as being enclosed in three walls by other Roman writers. Even the existence
of the Ophiotaurus posed a grave threat to the gods, for the burning of its entrails bestowed
the power to defeat them. Briareus - here incarnated as a giant ally of the Titans,
not as one of the Hecatonchires - slayed the Ophiotaurus with an adamantine ax. However,
the danger of this precarious predicament was averted when Zeus sent the birds of the
sky to retrieve the entrails before they were burned. In this task, a kite succeeded, and for
its great service to the gods, Zeus rewarded it by giving it a place amongst the stars.
Had the Titans succeeded in burning the Ophiotaurus’ entrails, it would have spelled
disaster for the gods, who would have been defeated and imprisoned in Tartarus. It is
possible that the details of this quote were derived from the Titanomachia, the lost epic
that described the war between the gods and the titans; however, it’s also possible that Ovid just
invented them. He was a notorious embellisher, and it’s well documented that he thought the old
stories of the Greeks to be nothing but nonsense written by fools. Here’s a couple lines he wrote:
“I prate of ancient poets’ monstrous lies, ne’er seen or now or then by human eyes.”
Another story similar to that of the Ophiotaurus is the subsequent war between the gods and the
giants. Per Apollodorus’ account, Gaia was furious at the imprisonment of the Titans,
so she birthed the giants. (She was impregnated by the droplets of blood
that fell to earth from Uranus’ severed genitals as they arced through the sky towards the sea.)
The giants were superlative in both size and strength and were fearsome to behold.
Thick matted hair hung from their heads and cheeks, and they had serpent’s coils
for legs. They attacked Mt Olympus, hurling an onslaught of massive boulders and flaming trees.
A prophecy revealed that the giants could not be defeated by the gods alone, but that they could
be defeated if a mortal joined the fight, which is why the gods recruited Hercules to fight alongside
them. To forestall the ruinous end that awaited her brood, Gaia frantically searched for a herb
that would make the giants indestructible, but Zeus disrupted her efforts, ordering the dawn,
the moon, and the sun not to shine, and while the land was darkened, he swooped in and plucked the
herb himself, thus guaranteeing the demise of the giants, all of whom were utterly destroyed.
And that’s it for this video!
If you enjoy the content please LIKE the video and SUBSCRIBE to the channel