Summon: Titan

Titan: The fury of the land

Appearances: FFIII, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFIX, FFXI, FFXIV, FFXV

Amano concept of Titan

Titan governs the element of earth. His signature attack is generally called 'Gaia's wrath' which normally summons earthquakes to strike the targets. His standard appearance is that of a very burly dark skinned man in a loin cloth.

The character Titan also appears in Final Fantasy I and XIII, though he is not summon-able in either game. In FFI there are two Titans that act as barriers to the party's profession requiring a Star Ruby before they move. In FFXIII Titan is one of the Pulse fal'Cie and governs the aptly named 'Titan's Trials' set of missions.

In Greek mythology the Titans were a group of primal deities. What is to come is only one version of how events unfolded. There were numerous accounts of how the world came to be and who gave birth to whom etc. The following is mostly based on Hesiods' Theogeny with help from Robert Graves' The Greek Myths. The Titans were the second generation of deities and were born to the creator deities Gaia (earth) and Uranus (heavens). In total there were seven to twelve children born (depending on the source), one of whom, Cronos, would prove to be a bit of a handful. Now the Titans were not the first children of Gaia and Uranus, a series of Hekatonkheires (hundred-handed giants) and Cyclopes. Uranus had turfed the Cyclopes into Tartarus which didn't sit well with his wife. So Gaia persuaded her other children, the Titans, to take revenge on Uranus. She gave her youngest son Cronos a flint sickle which he used to slice off his father's genitals. And so began the rule of the Titans. The irony being that Cronos would in turn be overthrown by his youngest son. But the Titanomachy is a story for another time.
    
The Titan most like Titan of Fina Fantasy is Atlas. Atlas was the son of the first generation of Titans.  Atlas is famous for bearing the weight of the heavens. As a Titan Atlas joined with his kin and lead them in the unsuccessful war against the Olympians. Zeus sparred Atlas's life but sentenced him to support the heavens on his shoulders for all time. Atlas did have one small deprive from his task. In Hercules' eleventh labor the hero convinces Atlas to let Hercules take on the weight of heaven in return for Atlas fetching the Golden Apples of Hesperides. In the later Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, Atlas is said to have been transfigured into Mt Atlas by Perseus using the severed head of Medusa.

There is also the tale of Atlas, son of Poseidon, told by Plato in his philosophic dialogue Timaeus. Atlas was ruler of a vast land that lay to the west of the Pillars of Hercules (Straights of Gibraltar). The Atlantians had amassed a powerful empire encompassing not only their home continent but parts of Egypt and Libya. They were set to take over the rest of the Mediterranean but were thwarted by the organization of Athens' naval forces. Afterwards the continent sank bellow the ocean in a single night of earthquakes and floods. It was this which caused the Atlantic to become un-navigable to the ancient Greeks.

For those interested in a discussion on the philosophical themes of Timaeus check out this article.

The Farnese Atlas-Naples