Stella Fritzell, Bryn Mawr College
This paper examines how the figures of Giants, who are popularly depicted as hubristic monstrous beings, helped to shape group identity in Arcadia. I argue that the experience of Giant myths and monuments identified by Pausanias contributed to the development of regional identity in three ways. Firstly, these stories evoked a local history in which Arcadians could be defined via social opposition to Giants. Secondly, this epichoric claim to the gigantomachy provided Arcadia with a means of fomenting unity and regional sovereignty in periods of conflict among Greek states and against foreign threats during the 7th to 4th centuries B.C.E. Finally, interaction with monuments such as the enshrined Giant bones in Megalopolis inspired reflection on the importance of ancestral legacy and heritage.
Giants have frequently been conflated with the Titans and other offspring of Gaia, as each group can be described as gigantes. Vian (1952) has reliably demonstrated that although the Gigantomachy and Titanomachy were imagined as distinct events during the Archaic period, these conflicts converged within the popular imagination by the 5th century B.C.E. In this paper I thus give Giants and Titans equal consideration. The Gigantomachy has traditionally been read as an allegory for the victory of civilization over barbarism, or of order over chaos (cf. Mayer 1887, Hardie 1986, Castriota 1992). While stark dichotomies are appealing for the ease of interpretation that they offer, they can be reductive. Recent work has complicated such binaristic readings of Giants and has suggested, instead, that their tale illustrates internal strife as much as it does external, particularly in the early Roman empire (cf. Wright 2018).
I open my discussion with Pausanias (8.28.1ff) who points to features on the Arcadian landscape that confirm the existence of an epichoric myth related to Giants. Alongside these, I consider stories of the Gigantomachy more broadly (Apollod. Bibl. 1.34ff, Ov. Met. 1.151ff) and point to a common narrative pattern—that it was necessary for Giants to be defeated or made absent for a human population to thrive—in order to demonstrate that the myth establishes an Arcadian past dependent on opposition to the Giants. Next, I examine place-specific iconography, such as the architectural frieze on the altar of Zeus at Pergamon or that on the Siphnian treasury at Delphi, as well as 1st – 3rd century C.E. coins from Seleucia ad Calycadnum, to identify a few common ways in which the Gigantomachy myth is intentionally repurposed and represented. In doing so, I highlight an unusual aspect of the Arcadian story—namely, a claim to giant heritage used as a means of establishing political legitimacy (cf. Page GLP 140b). Finally, I take a phenomenologically informed approach to the Arcadian monuments and landscape features identified by Pausanias and argue for interpreting these as memento mori, which invited contemplation on local heritage and legacy.