TITAN, in fabulous history, the son of Caelus and Terra.
and the elder brother of Saturn, suffered the latter to enjoy the crown, on condition that he should bring up none of a male issue, by which means the crown should at length revert to him. But Jupiter being spared by the address of his sister, Saturn's wife, Titan and his children were so enraged at seeing their hopes frustrated, that they took up arms to avenge the injury; and not only defeated Saturn, but kept him and his wife prisoners till he was delivered by Jupiter, who defeated the Titans; when from the blood of those Titans slain in the battle, proceeded serpents, scorpions, and all venomous reptiles. Such is the account given by the poets of this family of Grecian and Roman gods. From the fragments of Sanchoniatho, however, and other ancient writers, many learned men have inferred that the Titans were an early race of ambitious heroes, who laid the foundation of that idolatry which quickly overspread the world; and that by assuming the names of the luminaries of heaven, they contrived to get themselves everywhere adored as the superiorum genium. That the word Titan signifies the sun, there can indeed be very little doubt. Every one knows that such was its signification in the Aolic dialect; and as it is evidently compounded of Ti, which in some oriental tongues signifies bright or clear, and Tan, which signifies a country, or the earth, it may be safely concluded that Titan was the name of the sun before the word was imported into Greece. But the great question among antiquaries is, of what country was that race which, assuming to themselves the names of the heavenly bodies, introduced into the world that species of idolatry which is known by the appellation of Hero-worship? Pezron, in "L'Antiquité des Tems," maintains that the Titans were a family of Saccæ Scythians, who made their first appearance beyond Media and Mount Imaus, in the upper regions of Asia; that they were the descendants of Gomer, the son of Japheth and grandson of Noah; and that after conquering a great part of the world, upon entering Upper Phrygia, they quitted their ancient name of Gomerians or Cimmerians, and assumed that of Titans. All this, he says, happened before the birth of Abraham and the foundation of the Assyrian monarchy; and he avers that Uranus, their second prince, the order of succession, conquered Thrace, Greece, the land of Crete, and a great part of Europe. Uranus was succeeded by Saturn, and Saturn by Jupiter, who flourished, he says, 300 years before Moses, and divided his vast empire between himself, his brother Pluto, and his cousin-ereman Atlas, who was called Telamon. For the truth of this genealogy of the Titans, Pezron appeals to the most approved Greek historians; but, unluckily for his hypothesis, these writers have not a single sentence by which it can be fairly supported. Others, taking the fragment of Sanchoniatho's Phœnician History for their guide, have supposed the Titans to have been the descendants of Ham. Of this opinion were Bishop Cumberland and some other writers.