Gegenees

Region/Culture: Southern Europe (Greek; the myth is set on the Phrygian coast of the Propontis)
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts — a tribe of earthborn six-armed giants
Mythical Attributes: Each giant possesses six enormous arms, two from the shoulders and four more sprouting from his sides, letting him hurl boulders in volleys no ordinary man could match.
Role in Mythos: They serve as the savage hazard guarding Bear Mountain in the Argonauts’ tale, an obstacle thrown across the heroes’ path on the voyage to the Golden Fleece.
Relation to Humans: They are lethal to outsiders, ambushing seafarers and trying to trap them in the harbour like penned animals. The neighbouring Doliones alone go unharmed, shielded by their descent from Poseidon.

The sea around Bear Mountain looks calm enough from the deck of a ship. A steep island slopes down to the water, joined to the rich Phrygian shore by a strip of land so low the waves wash over it. Smoke rises from the city of the Doliones. And then, from the high ground above the harbour, something starts to move that should not be able to move at all: men the size of towers, each one waving six arms, scrabbling at the loose rock of the slope and prising loose boulders the size of cattle.

These were the Gegenees, the earthborn. Their name says it plainly. They were children of Gaia, the earth herself, pushed up out of the ground like everything else that grows from soil, except that what grew here had two arms at the shoulders and four more jutting from its sides, low on the flanks, so that a single one of them could carry and throw what a whole work-gang of men could not. To their neighbours they were less a tribe than a spectacle, a thing you pointed at and hoped never came down the mountain toward you.

The mountain was theirs by long custom. It rose at the eastern end of the isthmus, past the mouth of the River Aisepos, and the people round about simply called it the Mount of Bears. The plain and the low neck of land below belonged to others, to the Doliones and their young king Kyzikos, who built a city on the shore and lived their lives within sight of the monsters above them. That arrangement held for one reason only. The Doliones traced their blood back to Poseidon, and the sea god kept the earthborn off them. The giants could glare down from the heights all they liked. They never came for the people the god had claimed.

What broke the long quiet was a ship. The Argo came in on a stiff wind out of Thrace and ran into the harbour the locals called Fair Haven, and Kyzikos welcomed the crew like guests, which they were. In the morning the heroes split up. Some climbed toward the summit of Dindymon to get a look at the waters they still had to cross. Others worked the ship around from her old mooring to the deeper harbour of Khytos. It was the kind of ordinary task that fills the hours of any voyage, ropes and timber and the smell of salt, nobody expecting trouble.

The earthborn came down the far side of the mountain while the crew was scattered. They went straight for the harbour mouth and began heaving boulders into it, walling up the narrow channel, trying to pen the Argo inside like a beast in a trap. It was a clever plan for creatures usually described as brutes. It nearly worked. But Herakles had stayed behind with the younger men, and Herakles had his bow. He bent the recurved horn and started dropping them where they stood, one after another, and when the survivors turned on him and answered with jagged rock, he simply kept shooting. The old poets could not help noticing how neatly the whole thing fit the pattern of his life, and one of them muttered that Hera must have bred these things on purpose, an extra labour slipped in for the man she hated.

Then the rest of the Argonauts came back. The party that had set out for the summit turned around in time and arrived to find a fight already underway, and after that the end was never in doubt. The giants charged more than once, full of fury, and each time they met a hedge of spears and arrows. By the time it was over the whole tribe lay dead. Their bodies were stretched along the grey beach by the harbour mouth in a long row, the way felled trees are laid out to soak before the shipwrights bolt them together, some sprawled with their heads and chests in the surf and their legs on the sand, others the other way round, feet in the water. They were carrion now, for the birds and the fish. The day was the heroes’, and the Argo had nothing more to fear from that coast.

Their strength was the obvious thing, and the obvious thing was real. Six arms meant six weapons, six grips on the rock, a rate of throwing that could choke a harbour in minutes. Earthborn, they had the mountain itself for ammunition and never ran short. But strength was also all they had. They fought as a mob, charging in the open against archers and spearmen who held their nerve, and against a marksman with a good bow their numbers only meant more targets. Their reach was their whole story, and reach is no use against an arrow already in flight. The thing that finally stopped them was distance, the one weapon their many arms could not answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Gegenees in Greek mythology?

The Gegenees were a tribe of earthborn six-armed giants in Greek mythology who lived on Bear Mountain in Mysia, on the Phrygian coast of the Propontis. Their name means “earthborn,” and they are best known for attacking Jason and the Argonauts during the voyage for the Golden Fleece.

How many arms did the Gegenees have?

Each of the Gegenees had six arms: two growing from the shoulders like a normal man’s and four more sprouting lower down from the sides of the body. This gave each giant the strength of several men and let them hurl boulders in rapid volleys.

Who killed the Gegenees?

The Gegenees were wiped out by Jason and the Argonauts. Heracles, left guarding the ship with the younger crew, shot many of them down with his bow when they tried to block the harbour with boulders, and when the rest of the Argonauts returned they killed the entire tribe, leaving the bodies stretched along the beach.

Where did the Gegenees live?

The Gegenees lived on Bear Mountain, an island steeply sloping to the sea off the Phrygian mainland in the Propontis (the modern Sea of Marmara), east of the River Aisepos. The neighbouring lowland and plain belonged to the Doliones and their king Kyzikos.

Why did the Gegenees never attack the Doliones?

The Doliones lived peacefully beside the Gegenees because they were descended from Poseidon, and the sea god protected them from the earthborn giants. Only outsiders, like the arriving Argonauts, faced the monsters’ assault.