Aloadae
characters in Greek mythology, sons of Aloeus
In Greek mythology, the Aloadae () or Aloads (Ancient Greek: Ἀλωάδαι Aloadai) were Otus or Otos (Ὦτος means "insatiate") and Ephialtes (Ἐφιάλτης, which means "nightmare"), Thessalian sons of Princess Iphimedia, wife of Aloeus, by Poseidon, whom she induced to make her pregnant by going to the seashore and disporting herself in the surf or scooping seawater into her bosom. From Aloeus, sometimes their real father, they received their patronymic, the Aloadae. They had a sister Pancratis (Pancrato) who was renowned for her great beauty.
Mythology
The Aloads were strong and aggressive giants, growing by nine fingers every month. Nine fathoms tall aged nine, they were only outshone in beauty by Orion.
War with the gods
The brothers wanted to storm Mount Olympus and gain Artemis for Otus and Hera for Ephialtes. Their plan - the construction of a pile of mountains atop which they would confront the gods - is described by different authors (including Homer, Virgil, and Ovid), and occasionally changed by translators. Mount Olympus is usually said to be the bottom mountain, with Mounts Ossa and Pelion upon Ossa as second and third, either respectively or vice versa. Homer says that the Aloadae were killed by Apollo before they had any beards, consistent with their being bound to columns in the Underworld by snakes, with the nymph of the Styx in the form of an owl over them.
According to another version of their struggle against the Olympians, alluded to so briefly that it must have been already familiar to the epic's hearers, they managed to kidnap Ares and hold him in a bronze jar, a storage pithos, for thirteen months (a lunar year).
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This entry incorporates text from “Aloadae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.