Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Aloeus.
The gallery
Hermes Freeing Ares from the Bronze Jar (illustration to the Iliad)
John Flaxman (engraved by Tommaso Piroli), 1793 (drawing); 1795 (engraving)
In this neoclassical line engraving from his celebrated outline series for Homer's Iliad, John Flaxman illustrates the consequence of the great outrage committed by the sons of Aloeus. Otus and Ephialtes, the Aloadae, had overpowered the war god and shut him in a bronze jar for thirteen months, until Hermes stole the failing Ares away by stealth. Flaxman renders the rescue in his characteristic spare, sculptural contour line, distilling the episode (Iliad 5.385-391) into a few pure profiles. Though Aloeus is never figured himself, the scene turns entirely on the deed of his giant offspring, the act for which the Aloadae line is remembered.
Diane entre deux géants (Diana between Two Giants)
Toussaint Dubreuil (attributed), c. 1620-1630
This tapestry at the Château de Chambord, a classified French historical monument, shows the goddess Diana (Artemis) flanked by the two towering Aloadae, Otus and Ephialtes, the giant sons of Aloeus. The composition recalls the myth of their downfall: having threatened to storm Olympos and to carry off Hera and Artemis, the brothers were undone when Artemis darted between them as a deer, and the giants, hurling their spears, struck and killed one another instead. The work places the slender huntress-goddess between the colossal twins, freezing the moment that ends the hubris of Aloeus's line.
The Titans (Inferno, Canto XXXI), with Ephialtes among the giants
Gustave Doré, 1861 (first published edition)
Gustave Doré's wood engraving for Canto XXXI of Dante's Inferno depicts the chained giants ringing the central pit of Hell, among them Ephialtes, one of the Aloadae and a son of Aloeus, named by Dante as a rebel against the gods. Doré dramatizes the colossal scale of these figures against the human pilgrims Dante and Virgil, their bound, brooding forms emerging from gloom in the artist's signature tenebrous manner. By carrying Ephialtes from Greek myth into Dante's medieval cosmology, the image preserves the memory of the Aloadae's assault on heaven as the archetype of titanic punished pride.