The Seba library treats Tityos in 8 passages, across 5 authors (including Onians, R B, Kerényi, Karl, Burkert, Walter).
it is the liver of guilty Tityos that the vultures do devour in the Nekuia. This last has been interpreted by ancients and moderns as punishment of the organ of desire
Onians identifies the eternal devouring of Tityos’s liver as the classical locus for reading desire as localized in the hepatic organ, while questioning whether Homer himself held this view.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
One of Leto’s assailants, and therefore also an enemy of Apollon and Artemis, was the giant Tityos (to judge by his name, a phallic being), son of Zeus and Elara.
Kerényi establishes Tityos etymologically as a phallic giant, genealogically as Earth-born, and narratively as the adversary of Apollon and Artemis through his assault on Leto approaching Delphi.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
The dividing lines become clearer when Apollo is slaying monsters — the giant Tityos who tried to rape Leto, or the dragon at Delphi.
Burkert reads the slaying of Tityos as a defining monster-combat episode that articulates Apollo’s identity as divine enforcer of sacred boundaries.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis
cf. the fate of Tityos in relation to his passion pp. 85 f. above. The ‘wheel’ is a form of bond which moves perforce.
Onians links Tityos’s punishment explicitly to Ixion’s wheel as parallel expressions of erotic transgression resulting in eternal binding, situating both within a broader archaic psychology of desire and constraint.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Tityos having his liver devoured by a vulture, Tantalus with Furiarum maxima iuxta brandishing her torches at him when he would eat, Ixion, etc.
Onians cites Tityos alongside Tantalus and Ixion as canonical examples of underworld punishments assigned to individual transgression, each suffering under a particular infernal agency.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
Tityos, with the vultures; Tantalos, King of Lydia, the unworthy guest and table-companion of the gods, who was tortured by thirst and hunger
Kerényi catalogues Tityos among the canonical sinners of the Homeric Underworld, placing the eternal vulture-punishment in the narrative sequence Odysseus witnesses in the Nekuia.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
TITUOS: Tityus, a giant, the son of Gaea, punished in Hades, X 576-580, 324.
Autenrieth’s Homeric lexicon identifies Tityos tersely as an Earth-born giant punished in Hades, providing the primary Homeric text references for the figure.
, Homeric Dictionaryaside
Tityos, 214
Tityos appears as a bare index entry in Kerényi’s Dionysos study, indicating some marginal presence in the Dionysian mythological context without elaboration.
, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976aside