Typhon- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"Father of Monsters"

The Birth of Typhon

Gaia conceived Typhon in fury after Zeus imprisoned her children the Titans in Tartarus. She had urged Kronos to overthrow Uranus, then urged Zeus to overthrow Kronos, and both times the new king turned on her children. She lay with Tartarus itself, the abyss beneath the underworld, and from that union came the creature who would assault heaven. Hesiod names the birthplace Arima, a volcanic region the ancients identified with Cilicia, where the ground still smokes.

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo gives a different mother. Hera, enraged that Zeus had birthed Athena from his own head, struck the ground and prayed to Gaia and the Titans below. She conceived a son she swore would be mightier than Zeus. She did not raise him herself but gave the infant to the she-dragon Python at Delphi, the serpent that guarded the oracle before Apollo came.

A Form Beyond Horror

Hesiod gives Typhon a hundred serpent heads, each with dark tongues and fire in its eyes. From the thighs down his body was a mass of coiled vipers. He had wings, and his matted hair whipped in the gale of his own breath. His outstretched arms reached from east to west. His head brushed the stars. When he strode toward heaven, the mountains shook and the sea ran from the shore.

When he spoke to the gods his voice was clear, but when he raged his hundred mouths roared and bellowed and hissed until the sound reached Tartarus. Fire poured from his jaws, and the earth smoked where he walked.

The Flight of the Gods

When Typhon stormed toward Olympus, the gods broke. They fled south to Egypt and hid in the shapes of animals to escape his notice. Apollo took the form of a hawk and Hermes of an ibis. Aphrodite and Eros threw themselves into the Nile and became fish bound by a cord, a pair the Greeks later placed in the sky as Pisces. Only Zeus refused to run. He took up his thunderbolts and went to meet the monster alone.

The Sinews of Zeus

Apollodorus records what happened next. The two clashed at Mount Kasios on the Syrian coast. Zeus attacked with thunderbolts and the adamantine harpe, the curved blade Kronos had used against Uranus. He wounded Typhon and drove him back, but when they grappled at close range the monster seized the harpe and cut the sinews from Zeus's hands and feet. The god fell. Olympus was undefended. Typhon carried the crippled Zeus to the Corycian Cave in Cilicia, stuffed the severed sinews in a bearskin bag, and set the she-dragon Delphyne to guard them.

In Nonnus's Dionysiaca, it was Kadmos who freed Zeus. He disguised himself as a shepherd, sat near the cave, and played his pipes. Typhon, drawn by the music, came to listen. Kadmos told him he should hear a lyre instead, but he needed gut strings. If the monster would lend those sinews, Kadmos would play him a song like nothing he had ever heard. Typhon fetched the sinews himself. Before Kadmos could pluck a note, Hermes snatched them and ran. They fitted the tendons back into Zeus's limbs. His strength returned, and he seized fresh thunderbolts from the sky.

Mount Etna

Zeus renewed the assault and chased Typhon across the world. In Thrace, the monster tore up mountains and hurled them at the god. The Haimos range took its name from the Greek word for blood: Typhon bled when Zeus's bolts struck the mountains back. Driven across the sea to Sicily, Typhon collapsed under a barrage of thunderbolts, and Zeus heaved Mount Etna down upon him.

Typhon was not killed. He could not die. But he was pinned beneath the mountain, his chest crushed. From the summit, springs of fire fountain day and night. The earth above is fertile Sicily, heavy with grain and snow, but beneath the fields the prisoner writhes. Pindar describes what rises: by day, rivers of smoke roll across the sea; at night, red flame hurls rocks into the deep. He warned that the fire would one day devour those fields. When Etna erupts, Typhon stirs.

Father of Monsters

With Echidna, Typhon fathered the monsters that stalked the Greek world. Echidna was half woman and half serpent, beautiful above the waist, deadly below. She lived in a cave far from gods and mortals. Hesiod says she was ageless and would never die.

The Hydra lurked in the swamps of Lerna near Argos: two heads grew for every one Heracles cut until the hero took a torch to the stumps. The Chimera breathed fire over Lycia until Bellerophon rode Pegasus above it and drove a lead-tipped lance down its throat, and the lead melted and choked the beast from within. Their children spread from the swamps of Argos to the garden at the edge of the world, and heroes spent their lives hunting them down. Under Etna, their father still burns.