in fabulous history, the son of Caelus and Terra, and the eldest brother of Saturn, suffered the latter to enjoy the crown, on condition that he should bring up none of his male issue, by which means the crown would at length revert to him; but Jupiter being spared by the address of Rhea, Saturn's wife, Titan and his children were so enraged at seeing their hopes frustrated, that they took up arms to revenge 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 these Titans slain in the battle, proceeded serpents, scorpions, and all venomous reptiles. See SATURN.

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 affuming the names of the luminaries of heaven they contrived to get themselves every where adored as the Dii majorum gentium. That the word Titan signifies the sun, there can indeed be very little doubt. Every one knows that such was its signification in the Æolic 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 antiquarians is, of what country was that race which, affuming 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?

M. Pezron, in a work published many years ago, and entitled The Antiquities of Nations, maintains that the Titans were a family of Sacæ or 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 affumed that of Titans. All this, he says, happened before the birth of Abraham and the foundation of the Assyrian monarchy; and he makes Uranus, their second prince in the order of succession, to have conquered Thrace, Greece, the Island 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-german Atlas, who was called Telamon. For the truth of this genealogy of the Titans M. 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. It supposes not only the great antiquity of the Scythians, but likewise their early progress in arts and sciences, contrary to what we have proved in other articles of this work. See SCULPTURE, no 4 and 5, and SCYTHIA.

Others, taking the fragment of Sanchoniatho's Phenician history for their guide, have supposed the Titans to have been the descendants of Ham. Of this opinion was bishop Cumberland; and our learned friend Dr Doig, to whom we have been indebted for greater favours, indulged us with the perusal of a manuscript, in which, with erudition and ingenuity struggling for the pre-eminence, he traces that impious family from the profane son of Noah, and shows by what means they spread the indolent worship of themselves over the greater part of the ancient world. Cronus, of whose exploits some account has been given elsewhere (see SANCHONIATHO), he holds to be Ham; and tracing the progress of the family from Phenicia to Cyprus, from Cyprus to Rhodes, thence to Crete, and from Crete to Samathrace, he finds reason to conclude that the branch called Titans or Titaniades flourished about the era of Abraham, with whom, or with his son Isaac, he thinks the Cretan Jupiter must have been contemporary. As they proceeded from countries which were the original seat of civilization to others in which mankind had sunk into the grovellest barbarism, it was easy for them to persuade the ignorant inhabitants that they derived the arts of civil life from their parent the sun, and in consequence of their relation to him to affume to themselves divine honours. To ask how they came to think of such gross impiety, is a question as foolish as it would be to ask how Ham their ancestor became so wicked as to entail the curse of God upon himself and his posterity. The origin of evil is involved in difficulties; but leaving all inquiries into it to be prosecuted by the metaphysician and moralist, it is surely more probable that the worship of dead men originated amongst the descendants of Ham than amongst those of Shem and Japheth; and that the fragment of Sanchoniatho, when giving an account of the origin of the Titans, the undoubted authors of that worship, is more deserving of credit than the fabulous and comparatively late writers of Greece and Rome.