Did a Greek god create an island by crushing a giant under a mountain?

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 29 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In the ancient world, the violent struggle between the gods and the giants was more than just a story. It was a geological explanation. According to myth, Poseidon ended his pursuit of the giant Polybotes by hurling a massive fragment of land upon him, creating the island of Nisyros.

Polybotes was one of the Gigantes, born from the blood of Uranus after his son Cronus castrated him. During the Gigantomachy, the cosmic war between the Olympian gods and the giants, Polybotes faced off against Poseidon. The most enduring version of this encounter describes Poseidon chasing the giant to the island of Kos, where the god broke off a piece of the land and threw it at his foe. This missile became the island of Nisyros, with the giant trapped forever beneath its weight.

The myth served as a powerful narrative for the origins of specific landscapes. While some accounts suggest Polybotes lies beneath Nisyros, others claim he is buried under Kos itself. Alternative traditions even suggest that Poseidon missed his target with a trident, which then transformed into the island of Nisyros or Porphyris. These stories were deeply embedded in local identity; the Coans, for instance, maintained their own specific lore regarding the promontory of Chelone in relation to the giant.

This battle was a staple of Greek visual culture for centuries. Sixth-century BC black-figure pottery, such as the amphora Louvre E732, depicts Poseidon carrying the island of Nisyros on his shoulder, prepared to strike. By the second century AD, the geographer Pausanias documented a statue in Athens showing Poseidon on horseback attacking the giant. Whether through literary records from figures like Strabo or artistic depictions on vases, the image of the god subduing the giant remained a central motif in understanding the volatile, divine-touched nature of the Greek landscape.

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