Typhon

After Zeus had driven the Titans out of heaven and cast them into the dark pit of Tartarus, Gaia the Earth was consumed with rage. She had already lost her first children the Titans to the war, and now her second brood the Giants had also been defeated by the gods. Determined to have one final revenge, she descended into the deepest abyss of Tartarus and lay with the primordial god of that pit, Tartarus himself. From this union was born Typhon, the youngest and most terrible of all her children. He was a mixture of man and beast, so large that he extended beyond all the mountains while his head often touched the stars themselves. Down to his thighs he was human in form, with one hand reaching to the west and the other to the east, but from his shoulders sprouted a hundred serpent heads, each with eyes that flashed fire and tongues that flickered with dark flame. From his thighs down, great coils of vipers extended to the top of his head, hissing mightily. His entire body was winged, and the hair that flowed from his head and cheeks was matted and dirty. From all his mouths came every sort of horrible sound: sometimes speech that the gods could understand, sometimes the bellowing of a proud-eyed bull, sometimes the roar of a shameless lion, sometimes the barking of dogs, and sometimes a whistle so piercing that the tall mountains re-echoed to it.

When Typhon was fully grown, he set out to storm Mount Olympus and seize the throne of the gods. He hurled red-hot rocks at the sky itself and advanced with mixed hisses and shouts, while a great storm of fire boiled forth from his mouth. The other Olympian gods, struck with terror at the sight of him, fled from Olympus and ran to Egypt. There they transformed themselves into animals to hide from the monster. Zeus became a ram, the Egyptian god Ammon with curling horns. Apollo became a raven, the Egyptian god Horus. Dionysus became a goat, the Egyptian god Osiris. Artemis became a cat, the Egyptian goddess Bastet. Hera became a snow-white cow, the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite became a fish, the Syrian goddess Ashtarte. And Hermes became an ibis, the Egyptian god Thoth. Only Zeus, the king of the gods, stood his ground. He faced Typhon on Olympus and hurled his thunderbolts at the monster, but Typhon was so vast and so terrible that even the thunderbolts of Zeus could not bring him down immediately.

The battle that followed shook the earth to its foundations. Zeus struck Typhon with thunderbolt after thunderbolt, and the earth groaned beneath them, and the heat and blaze from both of them was on the dark-faced sea. The ground and the sky and the sea boiled, and towering waves tossed and beat all up and down the promontories in the wind of these immortals. A great shaking of the earth came on, and Hades, the lord over the perished dead, trembled in his underworld kingdom, and even the Titans under Tartarus, who lived beside Cronus, trembled at the dread encounter and the unending clamour. But Typhon was not easily defeated. In some accounts, he captured Zeus in his serpentine coils, wrested the adamantine sickle from him, and cut out the sinews from Zeus's hands and feet, leaving the king of the gods immobilized and helpless. Typhon then dragged Zeus to the Corycian cave in Cilicia and left him there, hiding the sinews inside a bearskin and setting a she-dragon to guard them. But Hermes, the messenger god, and Aegipan, a rustic deity, stole the sinews back and restored them to Zeus. In other accounts, Zeus never fell and simply pursued Typhon across the earth, hurling thunderbolts until the monster was driven to the ground.

In the most detailed version of the battle, Typhon fled from Olympus to Mount Casium, where he and Zeus clashed again. Zeus struck him with his thunderbolt, but Typhon fought back desperately, throwing entire mountains at the god. Zeus blasted the mountains apart with his thunderbolts and pursued the monster to Mount Nysa, where the Fates, the three goddesses who control the destiny of all beings, deceived Typhon into eating the fruits of Dionysus, which were wine grapes. They told him the fruit would give him strength, but it weakened him instead. Typhon fled again, and Zeus cornered him in Sicily. There Zeus dropped the entire mountain of Etna upon him, crushing him beneath its weight and imprisoning him in the earth. To this day, the eruptions of Mount Etna are said to be caused by Typhon's struggles beneath the mountain, his fire-breathing heads still roaring and his serpent coils still thrashing against the stone that holds him down. The smoke and lava that pour from the volcano are the breath and blood of the monster who once nearly overthrew the gods.

Typhon's legacy lived on through his children. He took the she-dragon Echidna as his mate, a creature who was half beautiful woman and half monstrous serpent, who lived in a cave beneath a hollow rock far from both gods and mortals. From their union came the most terrible monsters in Greek mythology. First came Orthus, the two-headed hound of Geryon. Then came Cerberus, the fifty-headed hound of Hades who guarded the entrance to the underworld and ate raw flesh. Then came the Lernaean Hydra, the serpent with nine heads that grew two more whenever one was cut off, whom the hero Heracles would later slay. Then came the Chimera, a creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, who breathed raging fire. Then came the Sphinx, the winged monster with the face of a woman and the body of a lion, who plagued the city of Thebes with her riddles. Then came the Nemean Lion, whose hide was impenetrable to any weapon, and whom Heracles strangled with his bare hands. Then came the Caucasian Eagle, the creature that ate the liver of Prometheus every day, and the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides. And there were others: the Colchian Dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, the sow Phaia at Crommyon, and the sea monsters Scylla and the Gorgon. Every monster that a Greek hero ever faced could trace its lineage back to Typhon and Echidna, making Typhon truly the father of all monsters.