The Titans

In Greek mythology, the Titans (Ancient Greek: Τιτάν - Ti-tan; plural: Τιτᾶνες - Ti-tânes) were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. The role of the Titans as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("Battle with the Titans") which effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East.

In the first generation of twelve Titans, they are:

    * Coeus - The titan of wisdom.

    * Crius - The titan of strength and power.

    * Cronus - The king of the Titans.

    * Iapetus - The titan of mortality.

    * Oceanus - The titan of the rivers.

    * Hyperion - The titan of supervision and compliance.

    * Mnemosyne – The titanessa of memories

    * Phoebe – The titanessa of darkness .

    * Rhea – The queen of Titans.

    * Tethys - The titanessa of the rivers.

    * Theia - The titanessa of sight and light.

    * Themis - The titanessa of justice.

The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion's children Eos, Helios, and Selene; Coeus's daughters Leto and Asteria; Iapetus's sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius; and Crius's sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.

In particular in Greek mythology, Crius, Kreios or Krios (Ancient Greek: Κρεῖος, Κριός) was one of the Titans in the list given in Hesiod's Theogony, a son of Uranus and Gaia. The least individualized among them, he was overthrown in the Titanomachy. M.L. West has suggested how Hesiod filled out the complement of Titans from the core group— adding three figures from the archaic tradition of Delphi, Koios, Phoibe, whose name Apollo assumed with the oracle, and Themis. Among possible further interpolations among the Titans was Kreios, whose interest for Hesiod was as the father of Perses and grandfather of Hekate, for whom Hesiod was, according to West, an "enthusiastic evangelist".

Joined to fill out lists of Titans to form a total that made a match with the Twelve Olympians, Crius/Kreios was inexorably involved in the eleven-year-long war between the Olympian gods and Titans, the Titanomachy, however without any specific part to play. When the war was lost, Crius/Kreios was banished along with the others to the lower level of Hades called Tartarus. From his chthonic position in the Underworld, no classical association with Aries, the "Ram" of the zodiac, is ordinarily made.