Echidna

Echidna was a monster of Greek myth, half beautiful nymph and half huge speckled snake, whom Hesiod calls a goddess who never dies or grows old. With Typhon she became the mother of many of Greece’s best-known monsters, among them Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra and the Chimaera, which is why she is called the “mother of monsters”.

Echidna’s Origin and Nature

Hesiod describes her as a monster unlike either mortal men or the undying gods: “half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth.” The gods gave her a cave deep under a hollow rock, far from gods and men, and she keeps guard in Arima beneath the earth, “a nymph who dies not nor grows old all her days” (Theogony 295–305). The name echidna is the Greek word for a viper.

In Hesiod, then, Echidna is immortal and lives hidden underground, and the sources show her only as a monster and as a mother.

Echidna’s Family

In Hesiod’s account, Echidna is the daughter of the sea-god Phorcys and Keto (Theogony 295–297), which makes her a sister of the Graeae and the Gorgons. In another version, Apollodorus calls her a daughter of Tartarus and Earth (Library 2.1.2). Typhon, by contrast, is the youngest child of Earth and Tartarus (Theogony 820–822; Library 1.6.3), so he is not her brother in Hesiod’s version.

Hesiod says that Typhon was “joined in love” to Echidna in her cave (Theogony 306–308), and Apollodorus likewise names Typhon as the father of her offspring (Library 2.3.1, 2.5.10).

Echidna, Typhon and Zeus

The ancient sources describe the war against Zeus as Typhon’s, not Echidna’s. Hesiod tells how Typhon would have come to reign over gods and men had Zeus not been quick to see it: Zeus thundered, leaped from Olympus, struck him down and burned his many heads, and in the end cast him into wide Tartarus (Theogony 820–868). In another version, Zeus buries Typhon under Mount Etna in Sicily: Aeschylus has Prometheus describe him lying crushed beneath the roots of Etna (Prometheus Bound 353–372), and Apollodorus has Zeus pursue him across the Sicilian sea and cast the mountain on him (Library 1.6.3). No surviving ancient text says that Echidna fought in this war; in Hesiod she remains in her cave.

The Death of Echidna

Hesiod makes Echidna immortal and ageless, so she has no death in his account (Theogony 304–305). A different tradition appears in Apollodorus: Echidna, a daughter of Tartarus and Earth who used to carry off passers-by, was caught asleep and killed by Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing giant who had eyes over his whole body (Library 2.1.2). The two accounts disagree, and the Library is the only source for her death.

Echidna’s Children

Hesiod lists her offspring in order (Theogony 306–336):

• Orthus, the hound of Geryon, who was killed by Heracles
• Cerberus, the fifty-headed, bronze-voiced hound of Hades
• The Lernaean Hydra, raised by Hera in anger at Heracles and destroyed by Heracles with Iolaus, through the plans of Athena
• The Chimaera, a fire-breathing creature with three heads, those of a lion, a goat and a snake; Bellerophon killed her with the help of Pegasus. Apollodorus, citing the same tradition, says that Typhon fathered the Chimaera on Echidna (Library 2.3.1)

By her own son Orthus, Hesiod says, Echidna bore the Sphinx, which destroyed the Cadmeans (Thebans), and the Nemean lion, which Hera raised to plague the hills of Nemea; Heracles overcame the lion (Theogony 326–332). Apollodorus agrees on the Sphinx, calling Echidna her mother and Typhon her father (Library 3.5.8).

Apollodorus adds further children of Typhon and Echidna: the hundred-headed dragon Ladon, which guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides, and the eagle that fed on the liver of Prometheus, which Heracles shot on the Caucasus (Library 2.5.11). Hesiod, by contrast, makes the snake that guards the golden apples a child of Keto and Phorcys (Theogony 333–336). The Gorgons, including Medusa, are not her children: in Hesiod they are daughters of Phorcys and Keto, and so Echidna’s sisters.

A Snake-Woman in Scythia

Herodotus records a Greek story from the Black Sea region about a woman who was a maiden above the waist and a viper below, in a cave in the land called the Woodland. She held the strayed mares of Heracles and would not return them until he lay with her, and she bore three sons, Agathyrsus, Gelonus and Scythes, of whom the youngest, Scythes, became the ancestor of the Scythian kings (Histories 4.8–10). Herodotus does not call her Echidna.

Echidna Sources

The main source for Echidna is Hesiod’s Theogony (295–336, 820–868). Apollodorus’ Library adds her parentage and death (2.1.2), and her children (2.3.1, 2.5.10–11, 3.5.8) and Typhon’s fate (1.6.3); Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (353–372) places Typhon under Etna. Herodotus (4.8–10) tells the story of the viper-woman of Scythia.

See Also: Typhon, Gaea, Tartarus, Keto, Phorcys, Argus Panoptes, Cerberus, Gorgons, Chimaera