How many heads did each of the Hecatoncheires have?

Each of the Hecatoncheires had fifty heads. Their name means “Hundred-Handers,” referring to their one hundred arms, not to the number of heads they possessed.

The three Hecatoncheires—Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges—were giant children of Uranus and Gaia in the standard Greek creation and succession myths. Their fifty heads and hundred arms made them symbols of overwhelming, almost unmanageable force. Uranus feared their power and imprisoned them, and later Cronus also kept them confined in Tartarus.

During the Titanomachy, Zeus released the Hecatoncheires. They fought for the Olympians by hurling enormous stones at the Titans, helping Zeus defeat Cronus and establish a new cosmic order. Ancient accounts are not identical: Hesiod’s Theogony and the later mythographer Apollodorus differ over the precise sequence of their births and imprisonments, but both preserve the distinctive fifty-head, hundred-arm form. A common quiz mistake is to reverse those numbers because the collective name emphasizes “hundred hands.”