Menoitios

Menoitios (or Menoetius) was the Titan god (perhaps) of violent anger, rash action, and human mortality. Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt and sent him to Erebos (the Underworld) as punishment for his hybristic behaviour.

He was a son of Iapetus and Clymene or Asia, and a brother of Atlas, Prometheus and Epimetheus. He was struck by Zeus with a flash of lightning, in the fight of the Titans, and thrown into Tartarus but he was not killed. (Hes. Theog. 507, &c., 514; Apollod. i. 2. § 3; Schol. ad Aeschyl. Prom. 347.)

The name Menoitios was derives from the Greek words menos meaning variously might, force, spirit, passion, batterage, and oitos meaning ill-fated or doomed. Hesiod also describes him as hybristes, a violent, overbearing and insolent man. Menoitios and his brothers, the sons of Iapetos, were all depicted with extreme human foibles: Prometheus was overly crafty, Epimetheus a fool, and Atlas exceedingly daring.

Menoitios was perhaps identical to Menoites the herdsman of Hades, whom Herakles wrestled with in the underworld. This connection with cattle, suggests that he was also the same as Bouphagos (the Cattle Eater) son of Iapetos, a hybristic man who attacked the goddess Artemis in Arkadia.

Category:Titans