InGreek mythologyAristaeus (/ærɪˈstiːəs/;Ancient Greek:Ἀρισταῖος,romanized: Aristaîos,lit. 'most excellent') is one of theGiants, the earth-born children ofGaia. TheSicilian Aristaeus took part in the battle against theOlympian gods, and he had the distinction of being the sole survivor of that battle.

The Aristaeus was one of the Giants, thus presumably a child ofGaia, the race that attacked the gods during the war that came to be known as theGigantomachy.^[1] He is probably named on anAtticblack-figuredinos byLydos (Akropolis 607) dating from the second quarter of the sixth century BC, where he is depicted fighting his opponentHephaestus, the god of the forge.^[2] He is said to have been the sole Giant who survived the Gigantomachy and its aftermath, as the fire of heaven did not reach him, nor didAetna harm him as he fled back toSicily. He was transformed into the Etnaeandung beetle, a large bug called 'Etnaean' due to its large size.^[3] The ancient Greeks used a “beetle of Aetna” either as a comic exaggeration (“as huge as Aetna”) or as referring to the actual size of the beetles on the mountain; Mount Etna was widely believed to be the home of a race of giant beetles.^[4]

• Alcyoneus
• Asterius
• Picolous
• Polybotes

• Aeschylus,Fragments. Edited and translated byAlan H. Sommerstein.Loeb Classical Library 505. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2009.
• Beazley, John D.,The Development of Attic Black-Figure, Revised edition, University of California Press, 1986.ISBN 9780520055933.Online version at University of California Press E-Books Collection
• Gantz, Timothy,Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources,Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes:ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1),ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
• Richards, G.C., "Selected Vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens—I",The Journal of Hellenic Studies13, The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 1893, pp. 281–292.
• Schefold, Karl, Luca Giuliani,Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art, Cambridge University Press, 1992ISBN 9780521327183.

• ARISTAEUS on The Theoi Project

• Hephaestus
• Gigantes
• Children of Gaia
• Metamorphoses into arthropods in Greek mythology
• Mount Etna
• Fictional beetles

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text