what are titans in greek mythology

In Greek mythology, the Titans were the pre-Olympian gods, the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before being in turn defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war called "the Titanomachy". The Titans were the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth) and their descendants. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, there were 12 original Titans: the brothers Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus, and the sisters Thea, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. The Titans were the Greek gods that ruled the world before the Olympians. They were eventually overthrown by Zeus and the Olympians, and most of the Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus in the underworld. The Titans played a significant role in Greek mythology and were the predecessors of the Olympian gods.