Tityus

Also Known As: Greek Tityos; a giant, son of Zeus and Elara or simply of Gaia, killed for assaulting Leto and punished in the underworld
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: He is large enough that his punishment has to be measured in farmland rather than in pain.
Role in Mythos: He attacks Leto on her way to Delphi, is shot down by her two children, and lies in the underworld with birds feeding on a liver that regrows.
Relation to Humans: The one thing he ever does to a woman is the crime that defines him, and Pindar draws the moral out loud, that a man should reach only for the loves that are within his power. On Euboea, awkwardly, he had a hero-shrine and received honours.

The measurement is the first thing anyone tells you and it is not a description. Nine plethra. Nine acres in the Latin poets. A number lifted straight out of land survey and applied to a body lying face up on the floor of the underworld, because the only way anybody could think of to convey his size was to say how much ground he took up if you needed to plough round him.

On either side of him sits a vulture. They are not tearing at him at random; Homer is specific that they reach in past the ribs and take the liver, and that he cannot get his hands to them. In Virgil there is one bird instead of two, with a hooked beak, burrowing down into a body it now lives inside. In Hyginus it is not a bird at all but a serpent, and the liver grows back with the new moon, which is the only version that tells you the schedule.

His parentage is disputed in a way that is itself part of the story. Homer calls him a son of Gaia, the Earth. Hesiod’s catalogue calls him a son of Elara. Apollodorus resolves the two: Zeus seduced Elara, daughter of Orchomenus, and then hid her under the ground for fear of Hera, and she gave birth down there to an enormous son whom the earth brought up into the light. So he is the child of a mortal woman and a god, gestated inside the earth, and the earth is credited as the mother because the earth did the carrying. Apollonius puts it neatly: Elara’s son, but nursed and born by Gaia.

What he does with that inheritance takes a single sentence in every version. Leto is walking to Pytho, which is Delphi, through the open country around Panopeus. He sees her and lays hands on her. In one telling he takes hold of her veil and starts dragging her off, and that is the scene Greek painters kept returning to, because it puts four figures in one frame and gives all of them something to do.

Leto calls her children. They were born for exactly this and they arrive with bows. Apollodorus says the two of them shot him dead. Pindar credits Artemis specifically, hunting him down with arrows out of a quiver he could not answer. Callimachus gives her the title Slayer of Tityos as a permanent epithet. Hyginus disagrees entirely and has Zeus kill him with a thunderbolt, and adds that Hera put him up to the assault in the first place, which makes him a weapon rather than an offender and is the only version in which anybody thinks to ask what he was doing there.

There is a quieter and older layer underneath all of this. In the seventh book of the Odyssey, long before Odysseus sees him stretched out in the dark, a Phaeacian king mentions in passing that his people once carried Rhadamanthys across to Euboea to visit Tityus, son of Gaia. Visit. Not fight, not view, not gloat over. Strabo, centuries later, records what was on that island: a cave named Elarion after his mother, a hero-shrine of Tityus, and honours paid to him. Somewhere in the Aegean there were people making offerings to the giant every other Greek writer had condemned to eternal disembowelment.

Strabo also passes on a version in which he is not a giant at all. In that account Apollo came into Phocis bringing cultivated fruit and civilised ways of living, and at Panopeus he destroyed Tityus, who was simply a violent and lawless man ruling there, and then the locals told him about a second cruel man called Python who was known as the Dragon. Two tyrants, cleaned up one after the other by an arriving god, and the myth we have is what happened to that story after several hundred years of poets.

The Romans kept him for a different purpose. He appears in Tartarus in the sixth book of the Aeneid, correctly measured, correctly attended. Propertius uses him as shorthand twice. Seneca puts him in the underworld catalogue and then, better, lets a maddened Hercules hallucinate him climbing out with his chest torn open and empty. And Lucretius, who did not believe in any of it, argues that the whole scene is a picture of something perfectly ordinary: there is no giant under the ground and no bird, and what the story is actually describing is a living man lying awake being eaten from the inside by his own appetites, which is a punishment nine acres wide and does not require an afterlife.

His powers, such as they are, amount to size and the confidence that goes with it. Nothing in the record credits him with strength used against anything but one unarmed woman, and Quintus Smyrnaeus says the thing that undercuts him completely: he seemed invincible, and then Apollo shot him.

His weakness is that he chose the worst possible target in Greek myth. Leto by herself would have been survivable. Leto with Apollo and Artemis on call is a woman who cannot be touched by anybody, and the tradition is unanimous that the archery took no effort and no time at all. Whatever he was before the poets got to him, a local strongman or an earth-born giant or the object of a small island cult, what he is now is a measurement, two birds, and a liver that will not stop growing back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Tityus in Greek mythology?

Tityus was an enormous giant, called the son of Zeus and the mortal Elara or simply the son of Gaia the Earth. He attacked the goddess Leto as she travelled to Delphi and was shot dead by her children Apollo and Artemis. In the underworld he lies stretched across nine acres while birds eat his liver.

Why is Tityus punished?

For assaulting Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, as she walked to Pytho through the country near Panopeus. Hyginus adds that Hera ordered him to do it out of jealousy, which is the only version in which he is acting on instructions rather than on impulse.

What eats the liver of Tityus?

Homer says two vultures, one on each side, reaching down past the ribs. Virgil gives him a single huge vulture with a hooked beak that burrows into the body. Hyginus says a serpent, and that the liver grows back with the new moon. The liver always regenerates, so the punishment never ends.

How big was Tityus?

Homer measures him at nine plethra, a unit of land survey, which works out at something close to nine hundred feet. Latin poets translate this as nine acres. It is a measurement of ground covered rather than a description, and no source gives him a face or any other physical feature.

Was Tityus ever worshipped?

Yes, on Euboea. Strabo records a cave named Elarion after his mother, a hero-shrine of Tityus, and honours paid to him there, and Homer mentions the Phaeacians ferrying Rhadamanthys over to Euboea to visit him. That layer sits oddly beside the punishment scene and is much less often mentioned.