Orthrus- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Hound of Geryon"

The Hound of Erytheia

Orthrus was a monstrous two-headed dog, born of Typhon and Echidna — the same pair that produced Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra, and the Chimera. Hesiod names him among this brood in the Theogony. Orthrus was set to guard the magnificent red cattle of the three-bodied giant Geryon on the island of Erytheia, far to the west beyond the Pillars of Heracles, near the stream of Ocean where the sun sinks each evening. There, alongside a herdsman named Eurytion, the two-headed dog kept tireless watch over the herd — a sentinel at the very edge of the world.

The Tenth Labor

When Eurystheus commanded Heracles to fetch the cattle of Geryon as his tenth labor, the hero journeyed to the far west. He set up the Pillars that bear his name at the strait between Europe and Libya and crossed Ocean itself in the golden cup of Helios, borrowed from the sun god for the voyage. On Erytheia, Orthrus was the first obstacle. The two-headed dog rushed to defend his charge, and Heracles killed him with a single blow of his olive-wood club. Eurytion the herdsman fell next. Then came Geryon himself — three-bodied and far more formidable — and Heracles brought him down with his arrows.

Contested Offspring

In the Theogony, Hesiod records that Orthrus mated with his own mother Echidna and sired both the Sphinx who plagued Thebes with her riddle and the Nemean Lion whose hide no weapon could pierce. The passage is ambiguous — the Greek pronouns could refer back to Typhon rather than Orthrus, and later authors like Apollodorus assigned both creatures different parents entirely. Whether Hesiod truly meant the two-headed hound as sire of the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion, or whether the lines have been misread for centuries, depends on a pronoun that the Greek does not resolve.