Uranus (mythology) three one-hundred-handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes. Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods." From the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes (the avenging Furies), the Meliae (the
Ancient Greek literature the most popular books ever published in the United States". George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" is a modern, rationalized retelling of the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion. James Joyce's novel "Ulysses", heralded by critics as one of the greatest works of modern literature, is a retelling of Homer's "Odyssey" set in modern-day Dublin. The mid-twentieth-century British author Mary Renault wrote a number of critically acclaimed novels inspired by ancient Greek literature and mythology, including "The Last of the Wine" and "The King Must Die". Even in works that do not consciously draw on Graeco-Roman literature, authors often employ concepts and