The Titans were the twelve children of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth) — a generation of vast, elemental gods who governed the world before the Olympians existed. Led by Cronus, the youngest and boldest, they overthrew their father Uranus and ruled during what later Greeks remembered as a golden age. Alongside Cronus and his sister-wife Rhea stood Oceanus, the world-encircling river; Hyperion, father of the sun; Iapetus, ancestor of Prometheus; and Themis, the embodiment of divine law and order.
Their rule ended in the Titanomachy, a ten-year war against the children of Cronus and Rhea. When the Olympians won, most of the male Titans were cast into Tartarus, while figures like Themis were folded into the new order. The Titans never vanished from the imagination — they remained the awesome, half-feared ancestors of the gods who took their place.
