Although the Greek giants are represented as essentially human in shape, their legs were sometimes depicted as the tails of serpents, and their hair was rendered as writhing snakes!
The ancient storyteller known as Homer regarded the giants as a separate race of men, whereas another source from antique times, Hesiod, wrote of them being of divine origin, arising from the spilled blood of Uranus.
I find the crimes that the giants committed of particular interest. These transgressions range from the troubling but hardly nefarious hurling of trees and attempting to steal the cattle of Helios (the sun), to deeds that are clearly malevolent, such as the attempted rape of Aphrodite and the enslavement of humanity.
Another distinct race of giants in Greek folklore was known as the Titans; the word 'Titanic' comes to us as a signifier of immense size. What we know about the historical ship Titanic was that it was an enormous vessel. (On a related note, I've just been reading Ian Jack's superb commentary on the upcoming 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. You can read it here:
The twelve Titans of Greek mythology were the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, and perhaps the most well-known of their number is Prometheus. A generous being, Prometheus gave to humans a number of gifts, including fire, but in so doing, he angered Zeus, king of the gods. As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock to have an eagle attacking his liver for eternity. It was Herakles, once more, who saved the day by freeing the tormented Prometheus from an unimaginably grim perpetual fate – but this time, Herakles acted on the side of the giants against the gods.
An invaluable source for this piece has been: http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/Gigantes.html
