HYPERION was the Titan god of heavenly light, one of the sons of Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven) and Gaia (Gaea, Earth), and the father of the lights of heaven--Eos the Dawn, Helios the Sun, and Selene the Moon. His wife was Theia, lady of the aither--the shining blue of the sky. Hyperion's name means "watcher from above" or "he who goes above" from the greek words hyper and iôn.
Hyperion was one of four Titan brothers who conspired with Kronos (Cronus) to castrate and depose their father Ouranos. When Sky descended to lie with Earth, Hyperion, Krios (Crius), Koios (Coeus) and Iapetos (Iapetus)--posted at the four corners of the world--seized hold of their father and held him fast while Kronos castrated him with a sickle. In this myth these four Titanes (Titans) personify the great pillars holding heaven and earth apart or the entire cosmos aloft described in Near-Eastern cosmogonies. As the father of the sun and dawn, Hyperion was no doubt regarded as the Titan of the pillar of the east. His brothers Koios, Krios and Iapetos presided respectively over the north, south and west.
The Titanes (Titans) were eventually deposed by Zeus and cast into the pit of Tartaros (Tartarus). Hesiod describes this as a void located beneath the foundations of all, where earth, sea and sky have their roots. Here the Titanes shift in cosmological terms from being holders of heaven to bearers of the entire cosmos. According to Pindar and Aeschylus (in his lost play Prometheus Unbound) the Titanes were eventually released from the pit through the clemency of Zeus.
