GIANT. In classic mythology the word meant beings more or less manlike, but monstrous in size and strength, like the Titans and the Giants sung by Hesiod in the Theogony, who can heap up mountains to scale the sky and war beside or against the gods. (O.E. geant through Fr. geant by assimilation from gigantem, acc. of Lat. gigas.) But there also appear in the legends of giants some with historic significance. The idea that the giants were earth-born or indigenous races was familiar to the ancient Greeks (see Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, i. 787). The Bible records the traditions of the Israelites of fighting in Palestine with tall races of the land such as the Anakim (Numb. xiii. 33 ; Deut. ii. 1 o, iii. ; I Sam. xvii. 4) . In Homer "the Cyclops and the wild tribes of the Giants" seem dim traditions of pre-Hellenic bar barians, godless, cannibal, skin-clothed, hurling huge stones in their rude warfare. Giant-legends of this class are common in Europe and Asia. In early times it was usual for cities to have their legends of giants. Thus London had Gog and Magog, whose effigies (14f t. high) still stand in the Guildhall (see Gog) ; Ant werp had her Antigonus, 4oft. high ; Douai had Gayant, 2 2 f t. high, and so on.
It was a common opinion that the human race had itself degen erated, the men of primeval ages having been of far greater stature and strength, in fact gigantic. Yet so far as can be judged from actual remains, it does not appear that giants, in the proper sense, ever existed, or that the men of ancient time were on the whole taller than those now living. It is now usual to apply the word giant merely to unusually tall men and women. In every race of mankind the great mass of individuals do not depart far from a certain mean or average height, while the very tall or very short men become less and less numerous as they depart from the mean standard, till the utmost divergence is reached in a very few giants on the one hand, and a very few dwarfs on the other.
See P. Lohmann, Archaologisches von en-nebi Samwil: Zeitschr. (1904) ; E. J. Wood, Giants and Dwarfs (186o).