Typhon

Typhon (; grc, Τυφῶν, Typhôn, ), also Typhoeus (; grc, Τυφωεύς, Typhōeús, label=none), Typhaon ( grc, Τυφάων, Typháōn, label=none) or Typhos ( grc, Τυφώς, Typhṓs, label=none), was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters.

Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or in later accounts, the island of Ischia.

Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story is also connected with that of Python (the serpent killed by Apollo), and both stories probably derived from several Near Eastern antecedents. Typhon was (from c. 500 BC) also identified with the Egyptian god of destruction Set. In later accounts, Typhon was often confused with the Giants.

Mythology

Birth

According to Hesiod's '' Theogony'' (c. 8th – 7th century BC), Typhon was the son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite". The mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD) adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants.

Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the ''Homeric Hymn to Apollo'' (6th century BC), Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals.

Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi, Turkey). The poet Pindar (c. 470 BC) calls Typhon "Cilician", and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave", an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey. In Aeschylus' '' Prometheus Bound'', Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves", and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus (4th or 5th century AD) have Typhon born in Cilicia.

The b scholia to ''Iliad'' 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Cronus, her and Zeus' father (whom Zeus had overthrown), and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them underground, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him.

Descriptions

According to Hesiod, Typhon was "terrible, outrageous and lawless", immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise:

Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvelous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed.

The ''Homeric Hymn to Apollo'' describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", and like neither gods nor men. Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed (as in Hesiod), while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria (c. 540–530 BC), depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails for legs below. Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing". For Nicander (2nd century BC), Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs.

Apollodorus describes Typhon as a huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, and fire flashing from his eyes:

In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes.

The most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus's ''Dionysiaca''. Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature, giving him a "tangled army of snakes", snaky feet, and hair. According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper", whose "every hair belched viper-poison", and Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head", and "the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!".

Following Hesiod and others, Nonnus gives Typhon many heads (though untotaled), but in addition to snake heads, Nonnus also gives Typhon many other animal heads, including leopards, lions, bulls, boars, bears, cattle, wolves, and dogs, which combine to make 'the cries of all wild beasts together', and a "babel of screaming sounds". Nonnus also gives Typhon "legions of arms innumerable", and where Nicander had only said that Typhon had "many" hands, and Ovid had given Typhon a hundred hands, Nonnus gives Typhon two hundred.

Offspring

According to Hesiod's '' Theogony'', Typhon "was joined in love" to Echidna, a monstrous half-woman and half-snake, who bore Typhon "fierce offspring". First, according to Hesiod, there was Orthrus, the two-headed dog who guarded the Cattle of Geryon

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