InGreek mythology,Pallas (/ˈpæləs/;Ancient Greek: Πάλλας) was one of the Gigantes (Giants), the offspring ofGaia, born from the blood of the castratedUranus.^[1] According to the mythographerApollodorus, during theGigantomachy, the cosmic battle of theGiants with theOlympian gods, he was flayed byAthena, who used his skin as a shield.^[2]

Though the origin of Athena's epithet "Pallas" is obscure,^[3] according to a fragment from an unidentified play ofEpicharmus (between c. 540 and c. 450 BC), Athena, after having used his skin for her cloak, took her name from the Giant Pallas.^[4]

This story, related by Apollodorus and Epicharmus, is one of a number of stories in which Athena kills andflays an opponent, with its hide becoming heraegis.^[5] For example,Euripides tells that during "the battle the giants fought against the gods in Phlegra" that it was "the Gorgon" (possibly considered here to be one of the Giants) that Athena killed and flayed,^[6] while the epic poemMeropis, has Athena kill and flay the GiantAsterus, using his impenetrable skin for her aegis.^[7] Another of these flayed adversaries, also named Pallas, was said to be the father of Athena, who had tried to rape her.^[8]

The late 4th century AD Latin poetClaudian in hisGigantomachia, has Pallas, as one of several Giants turned to stone byMinerva's Gorgon shield, calling out "What is happening to me? What is this ice that creeps o're all my limbs? What is this numbness that holds me prisoner in these marble fetters?" Then his brotherDamastor uses his petrified body as a weapon and hurls him at the gods.^[9]

Pallas was also the name of aTitan, with whom the Giant is sometimes confused or identified.

• Alcyoneus
• Athos
• Picolous

• Apollodorus,Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Burkert, Walter (1991).Greek Religion. Wiley-Blackwell.ISBN 978-0631156246.
• Cicero,De natura deorum, translated by H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, London William Heinemann LTD, 1933.
• Euripides,Ion, translated by Robert Potter inThe Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill Jr. Volume 1. New York. Random House. 1938.
• Guillén, Lucía Rodríguez-Noriega, "Epicharmus' literary and philosophical background" inTheater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy, edited by Kathryn Bosher, Cambridge University Press, 2012.ISBN 9780521761789.
• Hesiod,Theogony, inThe Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Hyginus, Gaius Julius,The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
• Janko, Richard,The Iliad: A Commentary: Volume 4, Books 13-16, Cambridge University Press, 1992.ISBN 978-0521237123.
• Robertson, Noel, "Chapter Two: Athena as Weather-Goddess: theAigis in Myth and Ritual" inAthena in the Classical World, edited bySusan Deacy, Alexandra Villing, Brill Academic Pub, 2001,ISBN 9789004121423.
• Wilk, Stephen R.,Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, Oxford University Press, 2000.ISBN 9780199887736.
• Yasumura, Noriko,Challenges to the Power of Zeus in Early Greek Poetry, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.ISBN 978-1472504470.

• Gigantes
• Children of Gaia
• Deeds of Athena
• Metamorphoses into inanimate objects in Greek mythology

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