GIANTS, persons or races of extraordi nary stature. History, both sacred and pro fane, makes mention of giants. The first mention of giants in the Bible is in Gen. vi, 4, where the Hebrew word used is nephilim, a word which occurs in only one other passage, where it is applied to the sons of Anak, who dwelt about Hebron, and who were described by the terrified spies as of such size that compared with them they appeared in their own sight as grass hoppers. A race of giants called the Rephaim is frequently mentioned in the Bible. In Gen. xiv, 5, and xv, 20, they appear as a distinct tribe, holding possessions in Canaan. At the period of the conqueit of Canaan, Og, king of Basilan, who had a bedstead nine cubits long, is said to have remained alone of this tribe, but this must be taken to mean alone on the east side of Jordan; for giants, who were probably of the same stock, are subsequently mentioned as living about Mount Ephraim (Jos. xvii, 15) and among the Philistines (2 Sam. xxi, 18). Goliath, who measured six cubits and a span, and who was slain by David, is the most cele brated of the giants mentioned as living among the Philistines. The other races of giants who are mentioned in the Bible (besides the sons of Anak already referred to) are the Emim, who occupied the country afterward held by the Moahites, and the Zuzim (a branch of the Rephaim), who lived on the east side of the Jordan, between the Arnon and the Jabbok. In Dent. ii, 20, they are said to have been called by the Ammonites, who conquered them, Zam zummim.
The giants of Greek mythology are believed by some to represent the struggle of the ele ments of nature against the gods, that is, against the order of creation. They were said to have sprung from the blood of Uranus, which fell into the lap of Ge (the earth). Their mother, indignant at the banishment of the Titans into Tartarus, excited them to revolt against the gods. They hurled mountains and forests against Olympus, disdaining the lightnings of Zeus. An oracle having declared that the gods could not conquer except by the assistance of a mortal, Athene called Heracles to their aid. He slew Alcyoneus and Porphyrion, the most formidable of the giants. Apollo and Heracles shot out the eves of Ephialtes; Dionysus slew Eurytus with his thyrsus; Hecate and Hephz stus killed Clytius with clubs of hot iron; Po seidon hurled a part of the island of Cos on Polyhotes; Athene buried Enceladus under the island of Sicily and flayed Pallas and made a shield of his skin. The remainder perished tinder the hands of other deities by the thun derbolts of Jupiter or the arrows of Heracles. This fable perhaps indicates volcanic eruptions, for which the Phlegman fields, where the chief scene of this struggle is placed and where the two principal giants were born, were remark able. Cos and Sicily, which figure in this fable,
are also volcanic. Ovid has described the war of the giants in the beginning of his 'Metamor phoses.) Giants figure largely in Celtic and Scandi navian mythology and legends. In the legends of the Irish there are the two giants, Fingall or Finn MacCutnhal and his son Ossian. The giants of the Welsh are familiar to everyone through the achievements of Jack the Giant Killer, the representative of the Scandinavian Thor, the destroyer of Skrinuner, and the Swiss giants.
Giants are rarer in occurrence than dwarfs, and like them and other abnormalities are fre quently sterile. They are generally of a lym phatic temperament and are seldom long-lived. Legends and traditions that have been handed down of giant races having inhabited the earth in remote and prehistoric times have been dis counted by scientific investigation, though fos sil bones, which may be those of mastodons or mammoths, have been mistaken for those of giants. On the other hand, the belief that primmval man was of a dwarfish stature and that races of pigmies now existing represent the sur vival of the earliest are equally unfounded.
The following are regarded as in the main authentic instances of giant stature: In the time of Augustus there were to be seen in the Horti Sallustiani at Rome, the bodies of a giant, Posio, and a giantess, Secundilla, each 10 feet 3 inches high. In the reign of Claudius, an Arabian giant named Gabbaras, 9 feet 4 inches high, was exhibited at Rome. The Emperor Maximin, a Thracian, was nearly 9 feet high. A Jewish giant, about 10 feet high, is men tioned by Josephus. Long Mores, an Irish giant, of the time of Edward III, was 6 feet 10% inches high. Queen Elizabeth's Flemish porter was 7 feet 6 inches; and J. Middleton, or the Child of Hale, born in 1578, attained the height of 9 feet 3 inches. C. Munster, a yeo man of the guard in Hanover, who died in 1676, was 8 feet 6 inches high; and Cajanus, a Swedish giant, about 9 feet high, exhibited in London in 1742. C. Byrne, who died in 1783, at tained the height of 8 feet 4 inches; and Patrick Cotter O'Brien, a native of Kinsale, who lived about the same time, was 8 feet 7g inches. In 1884 died Pauline Wedde (called Marian), a German giantee, over 8 feet 2 inches at the age of 18; and in 1887 Josef Winkelmaier, an Aus trian, 8 feet 9 inches, aged 22. Anna Swan, a • native of Nova Scotia, above 8 feet high; her husband, Captain Bates, a native of Kentucky, of the same height ; Chang-wu-gon, the Chinese giant, 7 feet 9 inches high; and Feeder Ma chow, a Russian, 7 feet 9 inches, are other in stances.