ToDo[edit]

So marched they then as though all the land were swept with fire; and the earth groaned beneath them, as beneath Zeus that hurleth the thunderbolt in his wrath, when he scourgeth the land about Typhoeus in the country of the Arimi [εἰν Ἀρίμοις], where men say is the couch of Typhoeus. Even so the earth groaned greatly beneath their tread as they went;

Hesiod[edit]

Shield of Heracles

32–33

Quickly he came to Typhaonium, and from there again wise Zeus went on and trod the highest peak of Phicium:¹

¹ A mountain peak near Thebes which took its name from the Sphinx （called in Hes. Th. 326 φῖξ）.

Fontenrose, [2]

Typhon is associated with Boeotia too (Python 3, b, p. 52), where there was a mountain called Typhaonion. When Zeus was on his way to visit Alkmene, says the poet of the Shield, he went quickly from Olympos to Typaonian, whence he stepped to the top of Phikion (Sphinx Mountain), from there went to Thebes. This seems to place Typhon mountain north of Sphinx Mountain and farther from Thebes. Dion Chrysostom, however, ... .In any case there was a Mount Typhon in Boeotia, in the Phlegyan country, perhaps near Tegyra. And Boeotia claimed Typhon's body ...

Theogony

295–305

And in a hollow cave she bore another monster, irresistible, in no wise like either to mortal men or to the undying gods, even the goddess fierce Echidna who is 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. And there she has a cave deep down under a hollow rock far from the deathless gods and mortal men. There, then, did the gods appoint her a glorious house to dwell in: and she keeps guard in Arima beneath the earth, grim Echidna, [305] a nymph who dies not nor grows old all her days.

306–318

Men say that Typhaon the terrible, outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her, the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bore Orthus the hound of Geryones, [310] and then again she bore a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, [315] being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles. And her Heracles, the son of Zeus, of the house of Amphitryon, together with warlike Iolaus, destroyed with the unpitying sword through the plans of Athena the spoil driver.

820–852

[820] But 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. Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders [825] grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads [830] 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; [835] and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it. But he thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around [840] resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, [845] through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. [850] Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamor and the fearful strife.

853–885

So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, [855] he leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunderstricken lord [860] in the dim rugged glens of the mount,¹ when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled² crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is shortened [865] by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus.³ Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire. And in the bitterness of his anger Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus. And from Typhoeus come boisterous winds which blow damply, [870] except Notus and Boreas and clear Zephyr. These are a god-sent kind, and a great blessing to men; but the others blow fitfully upon the sea. Some rush upon the misty sea and work great havoc among men with their evil, raging blasts; [875] for varying with the season they blow, scattering ships and destroying sailors. And men who meet these upon the sea have no help against the mischief. Others again over the boundless, flowering earth spoil the fair fields of men who dwell below, [880] filling them with dust and cruel uproar. But when the blessed gods had finished their toil, and settled by force their struggle for honors with the Titans, they pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them, by Earth's prompting. So he divided their dignities amongst them.

1 According to Homer Typhoeus was overwhelmed by Zeus amongst the Arimi in Cilicia. Pindar represents him as buried under Aetna, and Tzetzes read Aetna in this passage.

2 The epithet （which means literallywell-bored） seems to refer to the spout of the crucible.

3 The fire god. There is no reference to volcanic action: iron was smelted on Mount Ida; cp.Epigrams of Homer,ix. 2-4.

Homeric Hymns[edit]

Hymn to Apollo (3)

305–348

[305] She [the she-dragon of Delphi] it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhaon to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera bare him because she was angry with father Zeus, when the Son of Cronos bare all-glorious Athena in his head. Thereupon queenly Hera was angry [310] and spoke thus among the assembled gods:

“Hear from me, all gods and goddesses, how cloud-gathering Zeus begins to dishonor me wantonly, when he has made me his true-hearted wife. See now, apart from me he has given birth to bright-eyed Athena [315] who is foremost among all the blessed gods. But my son Hephaestus whom I bare [317a] was weakly among all the blessed gods and shrivelled of foot, a shame and a disgrace to me in heaven, whom I myself took in my hands and cast out so that he fell in the great sea. But silver-shod Thetis the daughter of Nereus [320] took and cared for him with her sisters: would that she had done other service to the blessed gods! O wicked one and crafty! What else will you now devise? How dared you by yourself give birth to bright-eyed Athena? Would not I have borne you a child —I, who was at least called your wife [325] among the undying gods who hold wide heaven. [325a] Beware now lest I devise some evil thing for you hereafter: yes, now I will contrive that a son be born me to be foremost among the undying gods —and that without casting shame on the holy bond of wedlock between you and me. [330] And I will not come to your bed, but will consort with the blessed gods far off from you.”

When she had so spoken, she went apart from the gods, being very angry. Then straightway large-eyed queenly Hera prayed, striking the ground flatwise with her hand, and speaking thus:

[335] “Hear now, I pray, Earth and wide Heaven above and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men! Harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength —nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Cronos.” [340] Thus she cried and lashed the earth with her strong hand. Then the life-giving earth was moved: and when Hera saw it she was glad in heart, for she thought her prayer would be fulfilled. And thereafter she never came to the bed of wise Zeus for a full year, [345] nor to sit in her carved chair as aforetime to plan wise counsel for him, but stayed in her temples where many pray, and delighted in her offerings, large-eyed queenly Hera.

349–355

But when the months and days were fulfilled [350] and the seasons duly came on as the earth moved round, she bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel Typhaon, to be a plague to men. Straightway large-eyed queenly Hera took him and bringing one evil thing to another such, gave him to the dragoness; and she received him. [355] And this Typhaon used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men.

367–369

Against cruel death neither Typhoeus shall avail you nor ill-famed Chimera, but here shall the Earth and shining Hyperion make you rot.”

Stesichorus[edit]

Fragment 239 (from Etymologicum Genuinum) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric III) (C7th to 6th B.C.)

"Typhoeus: Hesiod makes him son of Gaia (Earth), Stesichorus son of Hera, who bore him without a father in order to spite Zeus."

Fontenrose, p. 72 n. 5

⁵ ... Stesichorus too, it seems, called Typhoeus son of Hera; but perhaps the lexicographer who cites him made a mistake; Stes. frag. 60 Bergk, ap. EM 772. But see Dornseiff (1933:18-23), who believes that the author of the Hymn was later than Stesichoros, from whom he took this story.

West 1966, p. 380

Stes. fr. 62 belongs to a similar version ...

Epimenides[edit]

fr. 10 Fowler (Fowler 2001, p. 97) [= FGrHist 457 F 8, Vorsokr. 3 B 8]

[in "Typhon" folder]

Phid. Π εὐσ. N 433 VIb. (p. 85 Schober, 46 Gomperz).

...

F 8

8. (The story of Typho: in Epimenides’ version, Typho entered the palace while Zeus was asleep; and Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt).

Gantz, p. 49

"Epimenides Theogony agrees that Typhoeus attempted to take the rule of Zeus, and may have pictured him stealing into the palace while Zeus slept, only to be struck down when the latter awoke (3B8)."

Ogden 2013a, p. 74

Epimenides, writing c.500 BC, seems to have told the story of the battle in initially more human terms: 'In Epimenides Thyphon came up to attack Zeus' palace whilst he was asleep. He siezed control of the gates and got inside. But Zeus ran to the defence and, seeing the palace seized, is said to have killed him with a thunderbolt.'³⁰

³⁰ Epimenides FGrH 457 F8 = DK 3 B 8.

Fowler 2013, p. 27 n. 93

⁹³ The story recurs in Scandinavian myth (Hansen, AT 305-14), in which the motif of stealing the god's thunder while he sleeps is prominent; so possibly Epimen. fr. 10 (in the palace itself) and Nonnos, Dion. 1.145-55 (in a cave).

Lasus of Hermione[edit]

Fragment 706A (Campbell, pp. 310–311)

The Sphinx was daughter of Echidna and Typhon, according to Lasus of Hermione.

[See also Theoi "Ekidna"]

Acusilaus[edit]

fr. 12 Fowler (Fowler 2001, p. 10) [= Epimenides fr. 10 Fowler] [in "Typhon" folder]

12

Phid. Π εὐσ. N 433 VIb. Vidè Epimen. fr. 10

fr. 13 Fowler [= FGrH 2F13, Ogden 2013a] [= Diels Vorsokr.⁵ 9 B 6 = FGrH 2 F13?, Hošek] [= fragment 6 Freeman]

Fowler 2001, p. 11 fr. 13

Ἐχίδνης καὶ Τυφῶνος Κέρβεροη καὶ ἄλλα τερατώδη τέκνα ...

Fowler 2013, p. 28

Kerberos and 'other monsters' duly reappear as children of Typhon and Echidna in Akous. fr. 13;

Freeman, p. 15 fragment 6 [see also [3]]

6. (Cerberus is the son of Echidnê and Typho; also other monsters, including the eagle that eats the liver of Prometheus).

Gantz, p. 22

To this list, Akousilaos (2F13) and Pherekydes (3F7) agree in adding the eagle who devoured Prometheus' liver; Hesiod gives it no parentage.

Ogden 2013a, pp. 149–150 with n. 4

In the meantime the pair [Echidna and Typhon] had also aquired another monstrous child, according to Acusilaus and Pherecydes, in the form of the eagle that devoured Prometheus' liver.⁴

⁴Aucsilaus of Argos F13 Fowler, Pherecydes F7 Fowler.

fr. 14 Fowler

Fowler 2001, p. 11 fr. 14

ἐκ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Τυφῶνος ...

Fowler 2013, p.27

It was easy therefor for Akousilaos (fr. 14) to make all the earths biting creatures, including of course snakes, arise from the blood of the slain Typhon.⁹⁶

^9g Nikandros, ...

Gantz, p. 50

From Akousilaos, we have the statement that snakes arose from Typhoeus' blood (2F14)

Hecataeus of Miletus[edit]

FGrH 1 F300 [= Herodotus, 2.144.2]

[Herodotus writing of a visit by Hecataeus to Thebes in Egypt] Before these men, they said, the rulers of Egypt were gods, but none had been contemporary with the human priests. Of these gods one or another had in succession been supreme; the last of them to rule the country was Osiris' son Horus, whom the Greeks call Apollo; he deposed Typhon,¹ and was the last divine king of Egypt. Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus.

Aeschylus[edit]

Agamemnon

655–656

[655] and they, gored violently by the furious hurricane [τυφῶ] and rush of pelting rain, were swept out of sight by the whirling gust of an evil shepherd.

? Prometheus Bound

353–374

Pity moved me, too, at the sight of the earth-born dweller of the Cilician caves curbed by violence, that destructive monster [355] of a hundred heads, impetuous Typhon. He withstood all the gods, hissing out terror with horrid jaws, while from his eyes lightened a hideous glare, as though he would storm by force the sovereignty of Zeus. [360] But the unsleeping bolt of Zeus came upon him, the swooping lightning brand with breath of flame, which struck him, frightened, from his loud-mouthed boasts; then, stricken to the very heart, he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt. [365] And now, a helpless and a sprawling bulk, he lies hard by the narrows of the sea, pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna; while on the topmost summit Hephaestus sits and hammers the molten ore. There, one day, shall burst forth [370] rivers of fire,¹ with savage jaws devouring the level fields of Sicily, land of fair fruit—such boiling rage shall Typho, although charred by the blazing lightning of Zeus, send spouting forth with hot jets of appalling, fire-breathing surge.

¹ The eruption of Aetna in 479/8 B.C. is also described in a famous passage of Pindar （Pind. P 1.21, written in 470 B.C.）, which Aeschylus has here in mind. The lyric poet dwells on the physical aspect of the eruption by day and night; the dramatist, on the damage done to the labor of the husbandman.

Seven Against Thebes

511

fire-breathing Typhon

522–523

the unloved form of an earth-born deity [Typhon]

The Suppliants

556–564

Harassed by the sting of the winged herdsman she gains at last the fertile groves sacred to Zeus, that snow-fed pasture assailed [560] by Typho's fury, and the water of the Nile that no disease may touch—maddened by her ignominious toils and frenzied with the pain of Hera's torturing goad.

Pindar[edit]

Olympian

4.6–7

Son of Cronus, you who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon,

Pythian

1.15–28

[15] among them is he who lies in dread Tartarus, that enemy of the gods, Typhon with his hundred heads. Once the famous Cilician cave nurtured him, but now the sea-girt cliffs above Cumae, and Sicily too, lie heavy on his shaggy chest. And the pillar of the sky holds him down, [20] snow-covered Aetna, year-round nurse of bitter frost, from whose inmost caves belch forth the purest streams of unapproachable fire. In the daytime her rivers roll out a fiery flood of smoke, while in the darkness of night the crimson flame hurls rocks down to the deep plain of the sea with a crashing roar. [25] That monster shoots up the most terrible jets of fire; it is a marvellous wonder to see, and a marvel even to hear about when men are present. Such a creature is bound beneath the dark and leafy heights of Aetna and beneath the plain, and his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it.

8.15–18

[15] Violence trips up even a man of great pride, in time. Cilician Typhon with his hundred heads did not escape you, nor indeed did the king of the Giants.¹ One was subdued by the thunderbolt, the other by the bow of Apollo,

¹ Porphyrion, mentioned above.

Fragment 91 SM [apud Porphyry, On Abstinence From Animal Food 3.16]

Taylor, p. 111

Pindar too, in his hymns, represents the Gods, when they were expelled by Typhon, not resembling men, but other animals.

Fontenrose, p. 75

The flight of the gods before Typhon and their change into animal forms, an episode known to Pindar, was introduced as a result of the identification of Typhon with the Egyption Set (p. 177); thus the Greeks explained the animal forms of Egyptian gods. The Pindar fragment does not mention Egypt, but for all later writers (e.g., Nicander, Ovid, Nigidius) who speak of the flight and transformation Egypt was the scene. Yet, it seems, both Zeus's defeat and the tricking of Typhon were absorbed into this episode. For Ovid and perhaps Pindar (who says πάντας τοὺς Θεούς), Zeus fled and turned into a ram (Ammon). According to Nigidius, the gods, on Pan's advice, tricked Typhon by taking animal forms, so that they could move about him without his recognizing them.¹²

¹² Nigid. ap. Scholl. BS in Germ. Arat. 289; cf. Hyg. Astr. 2.28, Ampel. 2.10.

Griffiths, pp. 374-376

West 1966, p. 380:

Pindar in a prosodian (fr. 91) told the story of the metamorphosis of the gods into different animals in their haste to escape from him, plainly an Egyptian motif (J. Gwyn Griffiths, Hermes, 88, 1960, pp. 374-6).^I

^I The identification of Typhon and Set is attributed to Pherecydes of Syros by Wilamowitz, Gl. d. Hell. i. 266, n. 3, followed by W. Kranz, Hermes, 69. 1934, p. 114. This is based on a misunderstanding of Origen, ...

Ogden 2013a, p. 217:

Similar conceits had probably been deployed already in Nicander's description of Typhon's battle against the gods, and this may have gone back in its essentials to Pindar. Nicander's Typhon ... chased the Olympian gods to Egypt, where they all transformed themselves into different animals in order to hide from him: 'But ... do so.'¹² There is surely a latent reciprocity here. The tale serves, of course, as an aetiology of the animal-headed gods of Egypt.

¹² Nicander apud Antonius Liberalis 28; Pindar F91 SM (the gods change themselves into animals when chased by Typhon). So too Ovid Metamorphoses 5.319-31, Ampelius 2. 10, ... Lucian On Sacrifices 14, ...

Fowler 2013, p. 29

Pindar (fr. 91) also knows the story (common to Nikandros and Apollodorus) of how the the gods, fleeing from Typhon, changed themselves to animals and fled to Egypt, where simialr stories of gods changing into animals in battle were told—another link with that country.¹⁰⁶

¹⁰⁶ J. G. Griffiths, 'The flight of the Gods Before Typhon'.

Gantz, p. 49

Pindar ... Fragments of lost poems ... and. in a context where divine transformations are being considered , apparently had all the gods change into animals as they fled him (frr 92, 93, 91 SM).

Fragment 92 [apud Strabo 13.4.6]

Race 1997, p. 317, Race 2012, pp. 326–327

92 [apud Strabo 13.4.6] Strabo, Geography of Greece. "Pindar associates the territory of Pithekoussai and of Sicily with that of Cilicia, for he says that Typhos lies beneath Aitna (he quotes Pyth. 1.17-19), and further":¹

around him Aitna, an enormous confinement,

lies.

[Race 1997, p. 316:] ¹ Boeckh included frr. 92 and 93 among the prosodia because Porphyrion, de Abst. 3.16 reports that Pindar treated Typhos' pursuit of the gods in them.

Fragment 93 [apud Strabo 13.4.6]

Race 1997, p. 318, Race 2012, pp. 328-329

93 The same [Strabo]. "And further":

but father Zeus alone of the gods was slaying unapproachable, fifty-headed¹ Typhos by force once among the Arimoi.²

¹ Elsewhere in Pindar Typhos has one hundred heads.

² Cf. Il. 2.783 and Hes. Th. 304. It is uncertain whether this is a people or place—or where either is located.

West 1966, p. 250

Pi fr. 93 ἀλλ᾽ οἶος ἄπλατον ...

Fontenrose, pp. 72–73

[Pindar] describes Typhon much as Aeschylus does and definitely places him in the "Cilician cave of many names" (Κιλίκιον θρέψεν πολυώνυμον ἄντρον), i.e., the Corycian Cave; but he barely allides to the combat, saying only that Zeus destroyed Typhon among the Arimoi (presumbly in Cilicia) and that he lies in dread Tartaros under Etna. He is the earliest author to mention the flight of the gods before Typhon, when they took animal forms to escape him.⁷

⁷ Aesch. Pr. 353-374, Sept. 511-517; Pind. Pyth. 1.15-20, 8.16, Ol. 4.7 f., frags. 81, 240 Bowra.

Fox Lane, p. 292

In the early fifth century BC Pindar described the lair which "nurtured Typhon" [Pythian 1.17] as the "highly celebrated Cilician cave": it was presumably there, as we know in a fragment of one of his lost poems, that he claimed that "once, among the Arimoi," Zeus had battered Typhon, the monster with "fifty" heads.³³

Sophocles[edit]

Antigone

418

And then suddenly a whirlwind [τυφὼς] lifted from the earth a storm of dust

Euripides[edit]

Iphigenia in Tauris

1244–1248

Here the dark-faced serpent [1245] with brightly colored back, his scales of bronze in the leaf-shaded laurel, huge monster of the earth, guarded Earth's prophetic shrine.

Ogden 2013a, p. 43

Python was a son of Earth, on whose behalf he guarded the oracle, at least from the time of Euripides' description of him as a 'huge monster of Earth',

The Phoenician Women

1019–1025 [Coleridge]

You [the Sphinx] came, you came, O winged creature, born of earth [1020] and hellish viper [Ἐχίδνας], to prey upon the sons of Cadmus, full of death, full of sorrow, half a maiden, a murderous monster, with roving wings [1025] and ravening claws;

1019–1025 [Wyckoff]

You came, you came,

you winged thing, earth's offspring, monster's child,

to seize the sons of Cadmus.

Half a maiden, fearful beast,

with roving wings and claws that fed on blood.

Ogden 2913a, p. 149 n. 3

Prior to Hyginus, Echidna had been made the mother of ... the Sphinx by Euripides Phenissae 1020 ...

See also Pearson, p. 154; Mastronarde, p. 437

Pherecydes of Athens[edit]

fr. 7 Fowler [= FGrH 3F7 = Frag. 21 Müller = Schol. Ap. Rhod. 2.1248-50a (212.12 Wendel)]

Fowler 2001, p. 278 fr. 7

Τυφῶνος καὶ Ἐχίδνης τῆς Φόρκυνος τὸν ἀετὸν τὸν ἐπιπεμφθέντα Προμηθεῖ

Fowler 2013, p. 28

To this progeny, Pher. fr. 7 adds the eagle who devoured Prometheus' liver. The great hero-tormenting eagle sits reasonably well with siblings such as the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion.⁹⁸

⁹⁸ The genealogy is repeated in Apollod. 2.119.

Ogden 2013a, pp. 149–150 with n. 4

In the meantime the pair [Echidna and Typhon] had also aquired another monstrous child, according to Acusilaus and Pherecydes, in the form of the eagle that devoured Prometheus' liver.⁴

⁴Aucsilaus of Argos F13 Fowler, Pherecydes F7 Fowler.

Gantz, p. 22

To this list, Akousilaos (2F13) and Pherekydes (3F7) agree in adding the eagle who devoured Prometheus' liver; Hesiod gives it no parentage.

Allen, "Prometheus and The Caucasus", American Journal of Philoogy, Vol. XIII, No. 49, p. 61)

Pherecydes of Leros ... treated the story of Prometheus. The one quotation we have from this narrative concerns itself with the parentage of the eagle which tortured Prometheus.¹ It [eagle] was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.

¹Frag. 21 Müller (= Schol. Apoll. Rhod. II.1252).

Hošek, p. 678

Pherecydes, FGrH 3 F 7 names the father [of Echidna] -»Phorkys without specifying a mother

fr. 16b Fowler [= FGrH 3 F 16 b]

Fowler 2001, p. 286 fr. 16b

Fowler 2013, p. 28

Pher. fr. 16b adds [to the children of Typhon of Echidna] a hundred-headed, nameless snake [Ladon] that guarded the apples of the Hesperides.⁹⁷

⁹⁷ So also Apollod, Bibl. 2.113, Hyg. Fab. 151.1; Ap. Rhod. 4.1396-8 makes him earthborn and is the first to call him Ladon. Hesiod. Th. 333-5 made the serpent child of Keto and Phorkys.

Fowler 2013, p. 292

Fr. 16b says ...she [Hera] appointed a monstrous snake, child of Typhon and Echidna, possessing '100 heads and all manner of voices', to guard [the Golden Apples]

Ogden 2013a, p. 149 n. 3

³ ... Prior to Hyginus, Echidna had been made the mother of Ladon by Pherecydes F16b Fowler;

Hošek, p. 678

Children of E. and Typhon: ... Pherecydes, FGrH 3 F 16 b, the hundred-headed serpent that guards the golden apples of the Hesperides (-»Hesperides, -»Hercules;. Cf. Hes. Theog. 333-336).

fr. 54 Fowler

Fowler 2001, p. 307

Fowler 2013, p. 29

The report of Pher. fr. 54 makes it clear that Kaukasos was a way-station; after the mountain was set ablaze by Zeus' thunderbolt,¹⁰² Typhon fled to Pithekoussai, where early Greek settlers had drawn inferences from the regions's volcanoes.

Gantz, p. 50

Pherekydes also told the story: a summary of his account relates that Typhoeus flees to Caucasus and then, when those mountains begin burning (from a thunderbolt?), to Italy, where the island of Pithekoussai is thrown up around him (3F54).

Herodotus[edit]

2.144.2 [= Hecataeus FGrH 1 F300]

Before these men, they said, the rulers of Egypt were gods, but none had been contemporary with the human priests. Of these gods one or another had in succession been supreme; the last of them to rule the country was Osiris' son Horus, whom the Greeks call Apollo; he deposed Typhon,¹ and was the last divine king of Egypt. Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus.

1 Typhon is the Egyptian Set, the god of destruction.

2.156.4

This is the story that the Egyptians tell to explain why the island moves: that on this island that did not move before, Leto, one of the eight gods who first came to be, who was living at Buto where this oracle of hers is, taking charge of Apollo from Isis, hid him for safety in this island which is now said to float, when Typhon came hunting through the world, keen to find the son of Osiris.

3.5

Now the only apparent way of entry into Egypt is this. The road runs from Phoenicia as far as the borders of the city of Cadytis,¹ which belongs to the so-called Syrians of Palestine. [2] From Cadytis (which, as I judge, is a city not much smaller than Sardis) to the city of Ienysus the seaports belong to the Arabians; then they are Syrian again from Ienysus as far as the Serbonian marsh, beside which the Casian promontory stretches seawards; [3] from this Serbonian marsh, where Typho is supposed to have been hidden,² the country is Egypt. Now between Ienysus and the Casian mountain and the Serbonian marsh there lies a wide territory for as much as three days' journey, terribly arid.

1 Probably Gaza.

2 Hot winds and volcanic agency were attributed by Greek mythology to Typhon, cast down from heaven by Zeus and “buried” in hot or volcanic regions. Typhon came to be identified with the Egyptian god Set; and the legend grew that he was buried in the Serbonian marsh.

Aristophanes[edit]

Clouds

336

curls of hundred-headed Typho

Frogs

848

or a typhoon [τυφὼς] is fixing to let loose!

Lysistrata

974

Some twirling hurricane [τυφῷ] to tear

Euphorion of Chalcis[edit]

fr. 71.11

Or sooty Etna, resting-place of Asteropus.⁹⁹

⁹⁹ Perhaps one of the Cyclopes. “Steropes” is listed among their names elsewhere (Hes. Th. 140).

Callimachus[edit]

fragment 515 Pfeiffer (Trypanis, pp. 258–259) [= fragment 40 (161) Mair (below)]

... the foreigner.^a bringing the monstrous son of Echidna from below.

^a Heracles, who dragged Cerberus, the monstrous dog, guardian to the entrance of the lower world, away. Cerberus was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.

fragment 40 (161) Mair [= fragment 515 Pfeiffer (above)]

The guest bringing from the underworld the snaky [ἐχιδναῖον] beast.^c

^c The 12th labour of Heracles was to bring from Hades Cerberus whose mother was Echidna.

Apollonius of Rhodes[edit]

Argonautica

2.705–713

how once beneath the rocky ridge of Parnassus he [Apollo] slew with his bow the monster Delphyne, he still young and beardless, still rejoicing in his long tresses. ... And often the Corycian nymphs, daughters of Pleistus took up the cheering strain crying "Healer"; hence arose this lovely refrain of the hymn to Phoebus.

2.1208–1215 (pp. 184–185)

so huge a serpent keeps round and about it [the fleece] deathless and sleepless, which Earth [Gaia] herself brought forth on the sides of Caucasus, by the rock of Typhaon, where Typhaon, they say, smitten by the bolt of Zeus, son of Cronos, when he lifted against the god his sturdy hands, dropped from his head hot gore; and in such plight he reached the mountains and plain of Nysa, where to this day he lies whelmed beneath the waters of the Serbonian lake.

4.1396 (pp. 388–389)

Ladon, the serpent of the land, till yesterday kept watch over the golden apples in the garden of Atlas;

Lycophron[edit]

Alexandra

688–693 (pp. 550–551)

Thereafter the island^m that crushed the back of the Giants and the fierce form of Typhon, shall receive him journeying alone: an island boiling with flame, wherein the king of the immortals established an ugly race of apes, in mockery of all who raised war against the sons of Cronus.

^m Pithecussa=Aenaria, under which the giant Typhoeus lies buried and where the Cercopes were turned into apes by Zeus to mock the giants (Ovid, M. xiv. 90).

Nicander[edit]

apud Antoninus Liberalis 28

Typhon

Nicander tells this tale in the fourth book of his Metamorphoses.

Typhon was the son of Earth, a deity monstrous because of his strength, and of outlandish appearance. There grew out of him numerous heads and hands and wings, while from his thighs came huge coils of snakes. He emitted all kinds of roars and nothing could resist his might.

He felt an urge to usurp the ruler of Zeus, and not one of the gods could withstand him as he attacked. In panic they fled to Egypt, all except Athena and Zeus, who alone were left. Typhon hunted after them, on their track. When they fled they had changed themselves in anticipation into animal forms.

Apollo became a hawk, Hermes an ibis, Ares became a fish, the lepidotus, Artemis a cat, Dionysus took the shape of a goat, Heracles a fawn, Hephaestus an ox and Leto a Shrew mouse. The rest of the gods each took on what transformations they could. When Zeus struck Typhon with a thunderbolt, Typhon, aflame, hid himself and quenched the blaze in the sea.

Zeus did not desist but piled the highest mountain, Etna, on Typhon and set Hephaestus on the peak as a guard. Having set up anvils, he works his red hot blooms on Typhon's neck.

Diodorus Siculus[edit]

1.21.1–3

Although the priests of Osiris had from the earliest times received the account of his death as a matter not to be divulged, in the course of years it came about that through some of their number this hidden knowledge was published to the many. 2 This is the story as they give it: When Osiris was ruling over Egypt as its lawful king, he was murdered by his brother Typhon, a violent and impious man; Typhon then divided the body of the slain man into twenty-six pieces and gave one portion to each of the band of murderers, since he wanted all of them to share in the pollution and felt that in this way he would have in them steadfast supporters and defenders of his rule. 3 But Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, avenged his murder with the aid of her son Horus, and after slaying Typhon and his accomplices became queen over Egypt.

1.86.1–3

Since all the practices of the Egyptians in their worship of animals are astonishing and beyond belief, they occasion much difficulty for those who would seek out their origins and causes. 2 Now their priests have on this subject a teaching which may not be divulged, as we have already stated in connection with their accounts of the gods,²⁸ but the majority of the Egyptians give the following three causes, the first of which belongs entirely to the realm of fable and is in keeping with the simplicity of primitive times. 3 They say, namely, that the gods who came into existence in the beginning, being few in number and overpowered by the multitude and the lawlessness of earth-born men,²⁹ took on the forms of certain animals, and in this way saved themselves from the savagery and violence of mankind; but afterwards, when they had established their power over all things in the universe, out of gratitude to the animals which had been responsible for their salvation at the outset, [p. 295] they made sacred those kinds whose form they had assumed, and instructed mankind to maintain them in a costly fashion while living and to bury them at death.

²⁸ In chap. 21.

²⁹ i.e. the Giants.

5.71.2

He also visited practically the entire inhabited earth, putting to death robbers and impious men and introducing equality and democracy; and it was in this connection, they say, that he slew the Giants and their followers, Mylinus in Crete and Typhon in Phrygia.

Virgil[edit]

Aeneid

9.715–716

steep Prochyta is shaken, and that bed

of cruel stone, Inarime, which lies

heaped o'er Typhoeus by revenge of Jove.

Georgics

1. 278–279

Earth then in awful labour brought to light

Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus fell,

Horace[edit]

Odes

3.4.42–80 [See also Kaimowitz, pp. 98–99 and Commager, pp. 196–200]

The nations know

How with descending thunder he

The impious Titans hurl'd below,

Who rules dull earth and stormy seas,

And towns of men, and realms of pain,

And gods, and mortal companies,

Alone, impartial in his reign.

Yet Jove had fear'd the giant rush,

Their upraised arms, their port of pride,

And the twin brethren bent to push

Huge Pelion up Olympus' side.

But Typhon, Mimas, what could these,

Or what Porphyrion's stalwart scorn,

Rhoetus, or he whose spears were trees,

Enceladus, from earth uptorn,

As on they rush'd in mad career

Gainst Pallas' shield? Here met the foe

Fierce Vulcan, queenly Juno here,

And he who ne'er shall quit his bow,

Who laves in clear Castalian flood

His locks, and loves the leafy growth

Of Lycia next his native wood,

The Delian and the Pataran both.

Strength, mindless, falls by its own weight;

Strength, mix'd with mind, is made more strong

By the just gods, who surely hate

The strength whose thoughts are set on wrong.

Let hundred-handed Gyas bear

His witness, and Orion known

Tempter of Dian, chaste and fair,

By Dian's maiden dart o'erthrown.

Hurl'd on the monstrous shapes she bred,

Earth groans, and mourns her children thrust

To Orcus; Aetna's weight of lead

Keeps down the fire that breaks its crust;

Still sits the bird on Tityos' breast,

The warder of Unlawful love;

Still suffers lewd Pirithous, prest

By massive chains no hand may move.

Strabo[edit]

5.4.9 [Jones, LacusCutius]

The island of Prochyta lies off Cape Misenum, and it is a fragment broken off of Pithecussae.³⁵⁶ Pithecussae was once settled by Eretrians and also [p. 457] Chalcidians, who, although they had prospered there on account of the fruitfulness of the soil and on account of the gold mines, forsook the island ³⁵⁷ as the result of a quarrel; later on they were also driven out of the island by earthquakes, and by eruptions of fire, sea, and hot waters; for the island has "fistulas" of this sort, [248] and it was these that caused also the people sent thither by Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse to forsake the island and the fortress they had erected there; and then the Neapolitans came over and took possession. Hence, also, the myth according to which Typhon lies beneath this island, and when he turns his body the flames and the waters, and sometimes even small islands containing boiling water, spout forth. But what Pindar says is more plausible, since he starts with the actual phenomena; for this whole channel, beginning at the Cumaean country and extending as far as Sicily, is full of fire, and has caverns deep down in the earth that form a single whole, connecting not only with one another but also with the mainland; and therefore, not only Aetna clearly has such a character as it is reported by all to have, but also the Lipari Islands, and the districts round about Dicaearchia, Neapolis, and Baiae, and the island of Pithecussae. This, I say, is Pindar's thought when he says that Typhon lies beneath the whole region: "Now, however, both Sicily and the sea-fenced cliffs beyond Cumae press hard upon his shaggy breast."

³⁵⁶ But cp. 1.3.19.

³⁵⁷ Strabo's conciseness (if the MSS. are correct) leaves the passage obscure as to whether (1) both peoples left together because of a quarrel with other inhabitants, and later on returned, only to be driven out by the earthquakes (about 500 B.C.), or (2) left separately, first, the Chalcidians, because of a quarrel between the two, and, later on, the Eretrians, because of the earthquakes, or (3) part of each left at first, and the rest later on; but the first interpretation seems more likely. Livy (8.22), without mentioning the Eretrians, ascribes the founding of Cumae to the Chalcidians who had previously settled "Aenaria and Pithecussa."

9.2.20 [Jones, Perseus]

Among the neighboring lakes are Lake Trephia1 and the Cephissian Lake, which is also mentioned by the poet: "Who dwelt in Hyle, strongly intent upon wealth, on the shore of the Cephissian Lake."2 For he does not mean Lake Copais, as some think, but lake Hylice (accented on the last syllable like lyricé), which is named after the village near by that is called Hyle (accented like lyra and thyra), not Hyde, as some write, "who dwelt in Hyde." For Hyde is in Lydia, "below snowy Tmolus in the fertile land of Hyde,"3 whereas Hyle is in Boeotia; at any rate, the poet appends to the words, "on the shore of the Cephissian lake," the words, "and near him dwelt the rest of the Boeotians." For Lake Copais is large, and not in the territory of Thebes; whereas the other is small, and is filled from lake Copais through subterranean channels; and it is situated between Thebes and Anthedon. Homer, however, uses the word in the singular number, at one time making the first syllable long, as in the Catalogue, "and Hyle and Peteön,4 by poetic licence, and at another making it short, "who dwelt in Hyle," and "Tychius . . . , by far the best of leatherworkers, who had his home in Hyle."5 And certain critics are not correct in writing Hyde here, either; for Aias was not sending to fetch his shield from Lydia.

12.8.19 [Jones, Perseus] [= the first part of Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum Xanthus F4 p. 36 =? FGrH 765 F4a (see Ogden) or F13? (see Lane Fox)]

One should also hear the words of the ancient historians, as, for example, those of Xanthus, who wrote the history of Lydia, when he relates the strange changes that this country often underwent, to which I have already referred somewhere in a former part of my work.¹ And in fact they make this the setting of the mythical story of the Arimi and of the throes of Typhon, calling it the Catacecaumene² country. Also, they do not hesitate to suspect that the parts of the country between the Maeander River and the Lydians are all of this nature, as well on account of the number of the lakes and rivers as on account of the numerous hollows in the earth. And the lake³ between Laodiceia and Apameia, although like a sea,⁴ emits an eflluvium that is filthy and of subterranean origin. And they say that lawsuits are brought against the god Maeander for altering the boundaries of the countries on his banks, that is, when the projecting elbows of land are swept away by him; and that when he is convicted the fines are paid from the tolls collected at the ferries.

¹ 1.3.4.

² Cp. 13.4.11.

³ Now called Chardak Ghieul.

⁴ i.e., in size and depth.

13.4.5 [Jones, Perseus]

Sardeis is a great city, and, though of later date than the Trojan times, is nevertheless old, and has a strong citadel. It was the royal city of the Lydians, whom the poet calls Meïonians; and later writers call them Maeonians, some identifying them with the Lydians and others representing them as different, but it is better to call them the same people. Above Sardeis is situated Mt. Tmolus, a blest mountain, with a look-out on its summit, an arcade of white marble, a work of the Persians, whence there is a view of the plains below all round, particularly the Caÿster Plain. And round it dwell Lydians and Mysians and Macedonians. The Pactolus River flows from Mt. Tmolus; in early times a large quantity of gold-dust was brought down in it, whence, it is said, arose the fame of the riches of Croesus and his descendants. But the gold-dust has given out. The Pactolus runs down into the Hermus, into which also the Hyllus, now called the Phrygius, empties. These three, and other less significant rivers with them, meet and empty into the sea near Phocaea, as Herodotus says.¹ The Hermus rises in Mysia, in the sacred mountain Dindymene, and flows through the Catacecaumene country into the territory of Sardeis and the contiguous plains, as I have already said,² to the sea. Below the city lie the plain of Sardeis and that of the Cyrus and that of the Hermus and that of the Caÿster, which are contiguous to one another and are the best of all plains. Within forty stadia from the city one comes to Gygaea,³ which is mentioned by the poet, the name of which was later changed to Coloe, where is the temple of Coloënian Artemis, which is characterized by great holiness. They say that at the festivals here the baskets dance,⁴ though I do not know why in the world they talk marvels rather than tell the truth.

¹ Hdt. 1.80.

² Cf. 13. 1. 2.

³ Lake Gygaea, Hom. Il. 2.865

⁴ Thought to be the baskets carried on the heads of maidens at festivals.

13.4.6 [Jones, Perseus]

The verses of Homer are about as follows: “Mnesthles and Antiphus, the two sons of Talaemenes, whose mother was Lake Gygaea, who led also the Meïonians, who were born at the foot of Tmolus;”¹ but some add the following fourth verse: “At the foot of snowy Tmolus, in the fertile land of Hyde.” But there is no Hyde to be found in the country of the Lydians. Some also put Tychius there, of whom the poet says, “far the best of workers in hide, who lived in Hyde.”² And they add that the place is woody and subject to strokes of lightning, and that the Arimi live there, for after Homer's verse, “in the land of the Arimi where men say is the couch of Typhon,”³ they insert the words, “in a wooded place, in the fertile land of Hyde.” But others lay the scene of this myth in Cilicia, and some lay it in Syria, and still others in the Pithecussae Islands, who say that among the Tyrrhenians "pitheci"⁴ are called "arimi." Some call Sardeis Hyde, while others call its acropolis Hyde. But the Scepsian⁵ thinks that those writers are most plausible who place the Arimi in the Catacecaumene country in Mysia. But Pindar associates the Pithecussae which lie off the Cymaean territory, as also the territory in Sicily, with the territory in Cilicia, for he says that Typhon lies beneath Aetna: “Once he dwelt in a far-famed Cilician cavern; now, however, his shaggy breast is o'er-pressed by the sea-girt shores above Cymae and by Sicily.”⁶ And again, “round about him lies Aetna with her haughty fetters,” and again, “but it was father Zeus that once amongst the Arimi, by necessity, alone of the gods, smote monstrous Typhon of the fifty heads.”⁷ But some understand that the Syrians are Arimi, who are now called the Arimaeans, and that the Cilicians in Troy, forced to migrate, settled again in Syria and cut off for themselves what is now called Cilicia. Callisthenes says that the Arimi, after whom the neighboring mountains are called Arima, are situated near Mt. Calycadnus and the promontory of Sarpedon near the Corycian cave itself.

¹ Hom. Il. 2.864

² Hom. Il. 7.221

³ Hom. Il. 2.783

⁴ i.e., monkeys.

⁵ Demetrius of Scepsis.

⁶ Pind. P. 1.31

⁷ Pind. Fr. 93 （Bergk)

13.4.11 [Jones, Perseus] [= the second part of Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum Xanthus F4 p. 36 =? FGrH 765 F4b (see Ogden) or F13? (see Lane Fox)]]

After this region one comes to the Catacecaumene country,¹ as it is called, which has a length of five hundred stadia and a breadth of four hundred, whether it should be called Mysia or Meïonia (for both names are used); the whole of it is without trees except the vine that produces the Catacecaumenite wine, which in quality is inferior to none of the notable wines. The surface of the plain is covered with ashes, and the mountainous and rocky country is black, as though from conflagration. Now some conjecture that this resulted from thunderbolts and from fiery subterranean outbursts, and they do not hesitate to lay there the scene of the mythical story of Typhon; and Xanthus adds that a certain Arimus was king of this region;

¹ i.e., "burnt" country, situated about the upper course of the Hermus and its tributaries. Hamilton (Researches, II, p. 136, quoted by Tozer (Selections, p. 289, confirms Strabo's account.

16.2.7 [Jones, LacusCutius]

The Orontes River flows near the city. This river has its sources in Coelê-Syria; and then, after flowing underground, issues forth again; and then, proceeding through the territory of the Apameians into that of Antiocheia, closely approaches the latter city and flows down to the sea near Seleuceia. Though formerly called Typhon, its name was changed to that of Orontes, the man who built a bridge across it. Here, somewhere, is the setting of the mythical story of the Arimi, of whom I have already spoken.⁴³ [751] They say that Typhon (who, they add, was a dragon), when struck by the bolts of lightning, fled in search of a descent underground; that he not only cut the earth with furrows and formed the bed of the river, but also descended underground and caused the fountain to break forth to the surface; and that the river got its name from this fact. Now on the west, below Antiocheia and Seleuceia, lies the sea; and it is near Seleuceia that the Orontes forms its outlets, this city being forty stadia distant from the outlets, and one hundred and twenty from Antiocheia. Inland voyages from the sea to Antiocheia are made on the same day one starts. To the east of Antiocheia are the Euphrates, as also Bambycê and Beroea and Heracleia, [p. 247] small towns once ruled by the tyrant Dionysius, the son of Heracleon. Heracleia is twenty stadia distant from the temple of Athena Cyrrhestis.

⁴³ 12.8.19, 13.4.6

16.4.27 [Jones, LacusCutius]

[p. 373] The poet also mentions "Arimi,"²²² by which, according to Poseidonius, we should interpret the poet as meaning, not some place in Syria or in Cilicia or in some other land, but Syria itself; [785] for the people in Syria are Aramaeans, though perhaps the Greeks called them Arimaeans or Arimi

²²² Iliad 2.783.

Hyginus[edit]

Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Astronomica, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.

Astronomica

2.28 CAPRICORN OR SEA GOAT

Egyptian priests and some poets say that once when many gods had assembled in Egypt, suddenly Typhon, an exceedingly fierce monster and deadly enemy of the gods, came to that place. Terrified by him, they changed their shapes into other forms: Mercury became an ibis, Apollo, the bird that is called Thracian, Diana, a cat. For this reason they say the Egyptians do not permit these creatures to be injured, because they are called representations of gods. At this same time, they say, Pan cast himself into the river, making the lower part of his body a fish, and the rest a goat, and thus escaped from Typhon.

2.30 FISHES

Diognetus Erythraeus says that once Venus and her son Cupid came in Syria to the river Euphrates. There Typhon, of whom we have already spoken, suddenly appeared. Venus and her son threw themselves into the river and there changed their forms to fishes, and by so doing this escaped danger.

Fabulae

Preface

Smith 2007, p. 95

From Earth and Tartarus came the Giants: Enceladus, Coeus, <unintelligible>, Ophion, * Astraeus, Pelorus, Pallas, Emphytus, Rhoecus, Ienios, Agrius, Palaemon, * Ephialtes, Eurytus, <unintelligible>, Theomises, Theodamus, Otos, Typhon, Polybotes, Menephiarus, Abseus, Colophomus, and Iapetus.

Smith 2007, p. 96

[39] From Typhon and Echidna came; Gorgon, Cerberus, the snake that guarded the Golden Fleece at Colchis; Scylla (who had a woman's body above the waist, but a dog's below; she was killed by Hercules); the Chimaera; the Sphinx, who lived in Boeotia; the serpent Hydra, who had nine heads and was killed by Hercules; and the serpent of the Hesperides.

Mary Grant, 1960 Theoi

From Earth and Tartarus, Giants: Enceladus, Coeus, *elentes, *mophius, Astraeus, Pelorus, Pallas, Emphytus, Rhoecus, *ienios, Agrius, *alemone, Ephialtes, Eurytus, *effracorydon, Themoises, Theodamas, Otus, Typhon, Polybo[e}tes, *menephriarus, *abesus, *colophonus, Iapetus.

From Typhon and Echidna: Gorgon, Cerberus, the dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece at Colchis, Scylla who was woman above but dog-forms below [whom Hercules killed]; Chimaera, Sphinx who was in Boeotia, Hydra serpent which had nine heads which Hercules killed, and the dragon of the Hesperides.

H. J. Rose, 1933 [Latin] latin.packhum.org

[4.1] Ex Terra et Tartaro Gigantes, Enceladus Coe<us> †elentes †mophius Astraeus Pelorus Pallas Emph<y>tus <Rhoe>cus †ienios Agr<i>us †alemone Ephialtes <Eury>tus †effracorydon <Th>eomis<es> Theodamas O<t>us Typhon Pol<y>bo[e]tes †menephriarus †abesus †colophonus Iapetus.

[39.1] Ex Typhone et Echidna; Gorgon, Cerberus, draco qui

pellem auream arietis Colchis seruabat, Scylla quae superiorem

partem feminae, inferiorem canis habuit, [quam Hercules interemit]

Chimaera, Sphinx quae fuit in Boeotia, Hydra serpens quae

[39.5] nouem capita habuit, quam Hercules interemit, et draco Hesperidum.

140 [Smith]

Python Python son of Earth was a huge serpent.

140 [Grant]

PYTHON

Python, offspring of Terra, was a huge dragon who, before the time of Apollo, used to give oracular responses on Mount Parnassus.

152 [Grant]

TYPHON

Tartarus begat by Tartara, Typhon, a creature of immense size and fearful shape, who had a hundred dragon heads springing from his shoulders. He challenged Jove to see if Jove would content with him for the rule. Jove struck his breast with a flaming thunderbolt. When it was burning him he put Mount Etna, which is in Sicily, over him. From this it is said to burn still.

Ovid[edit]

Fasti

4.491–492 (pp. 224–225)

Lofty Etna lies over the mouth of huge Typhoeus, whose fiery breath sets the ground aglow.^c

^c See i. 573. The monster was imprisoned beneath Etna.

Metamorphoses

1.434—438

When Earth, spread over with diluvian ooze,

felt heat ethereal from the glowing sun,

unnumbered species to the light she gave,

and gave to being many an ancient form,

or monster new created. Unwilling she

created thus enormous Python.

3.301

his hundred-handed foe Typhoeus

5.321–331

She droned out, ‘Forth,

those deepest realms of earth, Typhoeus came,

and filled the Gods with fear. They turned their backs

in flight to Egypt; and the wearied rout,

where Great Nile spreads his seven-channeled mouth,

were there received.—Thither the earth-begot

Typhoeus hastened: but the Gods of Heaven

deceptive shapes assumed.—Lo, Jupiter,

(As Libyan Ammon's crooked horns attest)

was hidden in the leader of a flock;

Apollo in a crow; Bacchus in a goat;

Diana in a cat; Venus in a fish;

Saturnian Juno in a snow-white cow;

Cyllenian Hermes in an Ibis' wings.’

5.346 ff.

“Because he dared to covet heavenly thrones

Typhoeus, giant limbs are weighted down

beneath Sicilia's Isle—vast in extent—

how often thence he strains and strives to rise?

But his right hand Pachynus holds; his legs are pressed

by Lilybaeus, Aetna weights his head.

Beneath that ponderous mass Typhoeus lies,

flat on his back; and spues the sands on high;

and vomits flames from his ferocious mouth.

He often strives to push the earth away,

the cities and the mountains from his limbs—

by which the lands are shaken. Even the king,

that rules the silent shades is made to quake,

for fear the earth may open and the ground,

cleft in wide chasms, letting in the day,

may terrify the trembling ghosts. Afraid

of this disaster, that dark despot left

his gloomy habitation; carried forth

by soot-black horses, in his gloomy car.

Seneca[edit]

Hercules Furens

46–62 (pp. 52–53)

open the cavern in the Sicilian peak, and let the Dorian land, which trembles whenever the giant struggles, free the pinioned neck of that horrific monster.⁹

⁹ Typhoeus (also called Typhon), imprisoned under Mt Etna in “Dorian” Sicily. Line 83 (deleted): “let the moon on high conceive other wild beasts.” (“Other” than the Nemean Lion, sometimes said to have come from the moon.)

Thyestes

808–809 (pp. 298–299)

Can Typhon have thrown

the mountain off and stretched his limbs?

Lucan[edit]

Pharsalia

4.593–595

'Not yet exhausted by the giant brood,

'Earth still another monster brought to birth,

'In Libya's caverns: huger far was he,

'More justly far her pride, than Briareus

With all his hundred hands, or Typhon fierce,

Valerius Flaccus[edit]

Argonautica

but not among those rocks is the chiefest dread; Typhoeus lies crushed beneath Sicilian soil. Men say that as he fled, blasting forth accursed fires from his breast, Neptune grasped him by the hair, and bore him out to see and entangled him in the waters, and as the bloody mass rose again and again, churning the waves with serpent limbs, took him far away to the Sicilian waters and down upon his head placed all Aetna with her cities; savage still he throws up the foundations of the caverned mountain; then heaves Trinacria throughout her length and breadth, as he struggles and shifts the burdening mass with weary breast, to let it fall again with a groan – baffled.

Manilius[edit]

Astronomica

2.874–878 (pp. 150, 151)

With justice are they held to be the dread abodes of Typhon, whom savage Earth brought forth when she gave birth to war against heaven and sons as massive as their mother appeared.^g Even so, the thunderbolt hurled them back to the womb, the collapsing mountains recoiled upon them, and [cont.]

^g Typhon (or Typhoeus) is here (as in Horace) represented as being one of the Giants, though he was not born until after their defeat: his story is told by Apollodorus, Bibl. 1. 6. 3.

2.879–880 (pp. 152, 153)

Typhoeus was sent to the grave of his warfare and his life alike. Even his mother quakes as he blazes beneath Etna's mount.

Silius Italicus[edit]

Punica

8.540–541 (pp. 432–422)

Prochyte was not absent, nor Inarime, the place appointed for ever burning Typhoeus,^b

^b ...Prochyta (now Procida) and Inarime (now Ischia) are islands on the same coast The volcanic eruptions were attributed to the giants imprisoned below the islands.

Dio Chrysostom[edit]

1.67

[Speaking of a two peaked mountain near Thebes]: The one of them bore the name Peak Royal and was sacred to Zeus the King; the other, Peak Tyrannous, was named after the giant Typhon.

Apollodorus[edit]

1.6.3

When the gods had overcome the giants, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typhon in Cilicia,¹ a hybrid between man and beast. 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 winged²:unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals.³ However Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. There, seeing the monster sore wounded, he grappled with him. But Typhon twined about him and gripped him in his coils, and wresting the sickle from him severed the sinews of his hands and feet, and lifting him on his shoulders carried him through the sea to Cilicia and deposited him on arrival in the Corycian cave. Likewise he put away the sinews there also, hidden in a bearskin, and he set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, who was a half-bestial maiden. But Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus.⁴ And having recovered his strength Zeus suddenly from heaven, riding in a chariot of winged horses, pelted Typhon with thunderbolts and pursued him to the mountain called Nysa, where the Fates beguiled the fugitive; for he tasted of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby.⁵ So being again pursued he came to Thrace, and in fighting at Mount Haemus he heaved whole mountains. But when these recoiled on him through the force of the thunderbolt, a stream of blood gushed out on the mountain, and they say that from that circumstance the mountain was called Haemus.⁶ And when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown.⁷ So much for that subject.

¹ As to Typhon, or Typhoeus, as he is also called, who was especially associated with the famous Corycian cave in Cilicia, see Hes. Th. 820ff.; Pind. P. 1.15ff.; Aesch. PB 351ff.; Ant. Lib. 28; Ov. Met. 5.321ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 152; Mela i.76, ed. G. Parthey; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 4, 29, 92 (First Vatican Mythographer 11, 86; Second Vatican Mythographer 53). As to the Corycian cave, see Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3rd ed. i.152ff. According to Hesiod (Hes. Th. 821, Typhoeus was the youngest child of Earth.

² Or “feathered.” But Ant. Lib. 28 speaks of Typhon's numerous wings.

³ Compare Ant. Lib. 28; Ov. Met. 5.319ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 152; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 29 (First Vatican Mythographer 86). The story of the transformation of the gods into beasts in Egypt was probably invented by the Greeks to explain the Egyptian worship of animals, as Lucian shrewdly perceived （Lucian, De sacrificiis 14）.

⁴ According to Nonnus, Dionys. i.481ff., it was Cadmus who, disguised as a shepherd, wheedled the severed sinews of Zeus out of Typhon by pretending that he wanted them for the strings of a lyre, on which he would play ravishing music to the monster. The barbarous and evidently very ancient story seems to be alluded to by no other Greek writers.

⁵ This story of the deception practised by the Fates on Typhon seems to be otherwise unknown.

⁶ Haemus, from haima （blood）; hence “the Bloody Mountain.” It is said that a city of Egypt received the same name for the same reason （Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. ἡρώ）.

⁷ As to Typhon under Mount Etna see Aesch. PB 363ff.; Pind. P. 1.17(32)ff; Ovid, Fasti iv.491ff.; Ov. Met. 5.352ff.

2.3.1

It is said, too, that this Chimera was bred by Amisodarus, as Homer also affirms, [Illiad 16.328] and that it was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates

2.5.1

First, Eurystheus ordered him to bring the skin of the Nemean lion;¹ now that was an invulnerable beast begotten by Typhon.

1 As to the Nemean lion, compare Hes. Th. 326ff.; Bacch. 8.6ff., ed. Jebb; Soph. Trach. 1091ff.; Theocritus xxv.162ff.; Diod. 4.11.3ff.; Eratosthenes, Cat. 12; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.232ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 30. According to Hesiod, the Nemean lion was begotten by Orthus, the hound of Geryon, upon the monster Echidna. Hyginus says that the lion was bred by the Moon.

2.5.10

He [Geryon] owned red kine, of which Eurytion was the herdsman and Orthus, the two-headed hound, begotten by Typhon on Echidna, was the watchdog.

2.5.11

These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans.3 They were presented < by Earth> to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a hundred heads [Ladon], offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with many and divers sorts of voices.

the Caucasus the eagle, offspring of Echidna and Typhon, that was devouring the liver of Prometheus,

3.5.8

For Hera sent the Sphinx,2 whose mother was Echidna and her father Typhon; and she had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird.

E1.1

Third, he slew at Crommyon the sow that was called Phaea after the old woman who bred it;1 that sow, some say, was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon.

Oppian[edit]

Halieutica

3.15–25 (pp. 344–347)

Pan of Corycus, thy son, who, they say, was the saviour of Zeus--the saviour of Zeus but the slayer of Typhon. For he tricked terrible Typhon with promise of a banquet of fish and beguiled him to issue forth from his spacious pit and come to the shore of the sea, where the swift lightning and the rushing fiery thunderbolts laid him low; and, blazing in the rain of fire, he beat his hundred heads upon the rocks whereon he was carded all about like wool. And even now the yellow banks by the sea are red with the blood of the Typhonian battle.

Gaius Julius Solinus[edit]

38.8

8 Descensus in eum per duo milia et quingentos passus non sine largo die, hinc inde fontium adsidua scaturrigine. Vbi peruentum ad ima primi sinus, alter rursus specus panditur; quod antrum latis primum patet faucibus, postmodum in processu per angustias obscuratur. In eo sacrum est Iouis fanum, in cuius recessu intimo Typhonis gigantis cubile positum qui uolunt credunt.

Fontenrose, p. 80 n. 10

Typhon among the Gigantes: ... Solin. 38.8; ...

Quintus Smyrnaeus[edit]

Posthomerica (or Fall of Troy),

5.641–643 (pp. 252–253)

Enceladus by Zeus’ levin was consumed

Beneath Thrinacia, when from all the isle

Smoke of his burning rose

6.249–254 (pp. 272–273)

There lay the bulk of giant Geryon

Dead mid his kine. His gory heads were cast

in dust, dashed down by that resitles club

Before him that most murderous hound

Orthros, in furious might like Cerberus

His brother-hound

6.260–262 (pp. 272–273)

And there, a dread sight even for Gods to see,

Was Cerberus, whom the Loathy Worm [Έχιδνα] had borne

To Typho in a craggy cavern's gloom

Close on the borders of Eternal Night,

8.97–98 (pp. 354–355)

In craggy Dardanus, where the bride-bed [εὐναί] is

Whereon Anchises clasped the Queen of Love.

12.449–453 (pp. 518–519)

A cave there was, beneath a rugged cliff

Exceeding high, unscalable, wherein

Dwelt fearful monsters of the deadly brood

Of Typhon, in the rock-clefts of the isle

Calydna that looks Troyward from the sea.

14.582–585 (pp. 606–607)

As in the old time Pallas heaved on high

Sicily, and on huge Enceladus

Dashed down the isle, which burns with the burning yet

Of that immortal giant, as he breathes

Fire underground;

Nonnus[edit]

Dionysiaca

Book 1[edit]

1.137–146 (I pp. 12–13)

[137] Then Cadmos, passing in his travels from land to land, followed the never-staying tracks of the bull turned bridesman. He came to the bloodstained cave of Arima,^c when the mountains had moved from their seats and were beating at the gate of inexpugnable Olympos, when the gods took wing above the rainless Nile, like a flight of birds far out of reach, oaring their strange track in the winds of heaven, and the seven zones of the sky^d were sore assailed.

[145] This was the reason. Zeus Cronides had hurried to Pluto’s bed,^e to beget Tantalos, that mad robber of [cont.]

^c A mountain range in Asia Minor under which the monster Typhoeus was said to be laid, according to one story. Compare Hom. Il. ii. 783.

^d The course of the seven planets about the pole.

^e Pluto (not Pluton), daughter of Cronos and mother of Tantalos.

1.147–172 (I pp. 14–15)

the heavenly cups^a; and he laid his celestial weapons well hidden with his lightning in a deep cavern. From underground the thunderbolts belched out smoke, the white cliff was blackened; hidden sparks from a fire-barbed arrow heated the watersprings; torrents boiling with foam and steam poured down the Mygdonian gorge, until it boomed again.

[154] Then at a nod from his mother, the Earth, Cilician Typhoeus streched out his hands, and stole the snowy tools of Zeus,^b the tools of fire; then spreading his row of rumble-rattling throats, he yelled as his warcry the cries of all wild beasts together: the snakes that grew from him waved over his leopards’ heads, licked the grim lions’ manes, girdled with their curly tails spiral-wise round the bulls’ horns, mingled the shooting poison of their long thin tongues with the foam-spittle of the boars.^c

[163] Now he laid the gear of Cronides in a cubby-hole of the rock, and spread the harvest of his clambering hands^d into the upper air. And that battalion of hands! One throttled Cynosuris^e beside the ankle-tip of Olympos; one gripped the Parrhasian Bear’s mane as she rested on heaven’s axis, and dragged her off^f ; another caught the Oxdrover and knocked him out; another dragged Phosphoros, and in vain under the circling turning-post sounded the whistling of the heavenly lash in the morning; he carried off the Dawn, and held in the Bull, so that timeless, half-complete, horsewoman Season rested her team.

^a Tantalos stole the divine (food and) drink and gave it to men.

^b Odd, but intelligible; lightning is a sign of coming snow, Il. x. 7. But in Nonnos, νιφετός is often a storm, or showers of rain.

^c The hundred heads of the monster had the shapes of all kinds of animals: hence συμφυέες. He had two hundred hands. Compare Hesiod, Theogony 825 ff.

^d i.e. his hands which were as numerous as cornstalks in a field.

^e A variant of Cynosura.

^f Callisto.

1.173–202 (I pp. 16–17)

And in the shadowy curls of his serpenthair heads the light was mingled with gloom; the Moon shone rising in broad day with the Sun.

[176] Still there was no rest. The Giant turned back, and passed from north to south; he left one pole and stood by the other. With a long arm he grasped the Charioteer, and flogged the back of hailstorming Aigoceros; he dragged the two Fishes out of the sky and cast them into the sea; he buffeted the Ram, that midnipple star of Olympos, who balances with equal pin day and darkness over the fiery orb of his spring-time neighbour.^a With trailing feet Typhoeus mounted close to the clouds: spreading abroad the far-scattered host of his arms, he shadowed the bright radiance of the unclouded sky by darting forth his tangled army of snakes. One of them ran up right through the rim of the polar circuit and skipt upon the backbone of the heavenly Serpent, hissing his mortal challenge. One made for Cepheus’s daughter,^b and with starry fingers twisting a ring as close as the other, enchained Andromeda, bound already, with a second bond aslant under her bands. Another, a horned serpent, entwined about the forked horns of the Bull’s horned head of shape like his own, and dangled coiling over the Bull’s brow, tormenting with open jaws the Hyades opposite ranged like a crescent moon. Poison-spitting tangles of serpents in a bunch girdled the Ox-drover. Another made a bold leap, when he saw another Snake in Olympos, and jumped around the Ophiuchos’s arm that held the viper; then curving his neck and coiling his crawling belly, he braided a second chaplet about Ariadne’s crown.

^a For the Ram and spring-time, see xxxviii. 269.

^b Andromeda.

1.203–231 (I pp. 18–19)

[203] Then Typhoeus manyarmed turned to both ends, shaking with his host of arms the girdle of Zephryos and the wing of Euros opposite, dragging first Phosphoros, then Hesperos and the crest of Atlas. Many a time in the weedy gulf he seized Poseidon’s chariot, and dragged it from the depths of the sea to land; again he pulled out a stallion by his brine-soaked mane from the undersea manger, and threw the vagabond nag to the vault of heaven, shooting his shot at Olympos – hit the Sun’s chariot, and the horses on their round whinnied under the yoke. Many a time he took a bull at rest from his rustic plowtree and shook him with a threatening hand, bellow as he would, then shot him against the Moon like another moon, and stayed her course, then rushed hissing against the goddess, checking with the bridle her bulls’ white yoke-straps, while he poured out the mortal whistle of a poison-spitting viper.

[219] But Titan Mene^a would not yield to the attack. Battling against the Giant’s heads, like-horned to hers, she cared many a scar on the shining orb of her bull’s horn^b; and Selene’s radiant cattle bellowed amazed at the gaping chasm of Typhaon’s throat. The Seasons undaunted armed the starry battalions, and the lines of heavenly Constellations in a disciplined circle came shining to the fray. A varied host maddened the upper air with clamour and with flame: some whose portion was Boreas, others the back of Lips in the west, or the eastern zones or the recesses of the south. The unshaken congregation of the fixt stars with unanimous acclamation left their places and caught up their travelling fellows. The axis passing [cont.]

^a The Moon.

^b Nonnos pictures the moon as Isis-Hathor, with horns and a disk between them.

1.232–258 (I pp. 20–21)

through the heaven’s hollow and fixt upright in the midst, groaned at the sound. Orion the hunter, seeing these tribes of wild beasts,^a drew his sword; the blade of the Tanagraian brand sparkled bright as its master made ready for attack; his thirsty^b Dog, shooting light from his fiery chin, bubbled up in his starry throat and let out a hot bark, and blew out the steam from his teeth against Typhaon’s beasts instead of the usual hare. The sky was full of din, and, answering the seven-zoned heaven, the seven-throated cry of the Pleiads raised the war-shout from as many throats; and the planets as many again banged out an equal noise.

[244] Radiant Ophiuchos, seeing the Giant’s direful snaky shape, from his hands so potent against evil shook off the gray coils of the fire-bred serpents, and shot the dappled coiling missile, while tempests roared round his flames – the viper-arrows flew slanting and maddened the air. Then the Archer^c let fly a shaft, – that bold comrade of fish-like Aigoceros^d; the Dragon, divided between the two Bears, and visible within the circle of the Wain, brandished the fiery trail of the heavenly spine; the Oxherd, Erigone’s neighbour, attendant driver of the Wain, hurled his crook with flashing arm; beside the knee of the Image^e and his neighbour the Swan, the starry Lyre presaged the victory of Zeus.

[258] Now Typhoeus shifted to the rocks, leaving the air, to flog the seas. He grasped and shook the peak [cont.]

^a The heads of Typhoeus. Before becoming a constellation Orion was a Boeotian (hence loosely Tanagraian) hunter.

^b Because it rises in the dog-days.

^c Sagittarius.

^d Capricorn, represented as a fish-tailed goat.

^e A kneeling man, called now Hercules, but by the Greeks eidolon aiston, or Eggonasin, Latinized as Engonasin.

1.259–287 (I pp. 22–23)

of Corycios,^a and crushing the flood of the river that belongs to Cilicia, joined Tarsos and Cydnos together in one hand; then hurled a volley of cliffs upon the mustered waves of the brine. As the Giant advanced with feet trailing in the briny flood, his bare loins were seen dry through the water, which broke heavy against his mid-thigh crashing and booming; his serpents afloat sounded the charge with hissings from brine-beaten throats, and spitting poison led the attack upon the sea. There stood Typhon in the fish-giving sea, his feet firm in the depths of the weedy bottom, his belly in the air and crushed in clouds: hearing the terrible roar from the mane-bristling lions of his giant’s head, the sea-lion lurked in the oozy gulf. There was no room in the deep for all its phalanx of leviathans, since the Earthborn monster covered a whole sea, larger than the land, with flanks that no sea could cover. The seals bleated, the dolphins hid in the deep water; the manyfooted squid, a master of craft, weaving his trailing web of crisscross knots, stuck fast on his familiar rock, making his limbs look like a pattern on the stone. All the world was a-tremble: the love-maddened murry herself,^b drawn by her passion for the serpent’s bed, shivered under the god-desecrating breath of these seafaring serpents. The waters piled up and touched Olympos with precipitous seas; as the streams mounted on high, the bird never touched by rain found the sea his neighbour, and washed himself. Typhoeus, holding a counterfeit of the deep-sea [cont.]

^a A rock on the coast of Asia Minor, near Erythrai. The Cydnos runs through the city of Tarsos.

^b The loves of the murry, or lamprey, and viper are told by Aelian (Hist. An. i. 50).

1.288–318 (I pp. 24–25)

trident, with one earthshaking flip from his enormous hand broke off an island at the edge of the continent which is the kerb of the brine, circled it round and round, and hurled the whole thing like a ball. And while the Giant waged his war, his hurtling arms drew near to the stars, and obscured the sun, as they attacked Olympos, and cast the precipitous crag.

[294] Now after the frontier of the deep, after the well-laid foundation of the earth, this bastard Zeus armed his hand with fire-barbed thunderbolt: raising the gear of Zeus was hard work for the monster Typhoeus with two hundred furious hands, so great was the weight; but Cronion would lightly lift it with one hand. No clouds were about the Giant: against his dry arms, the thunder let out a dull-sounding note booming gently without a clap, and in the drought of the air scarcely did a thirsty dew trickle in snowflakes without a drop in them; the lightning was dim, and only a softish flame shone sparkling shamefacedly, like smoke shot with flame. The thunderbolts felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned. Often they slipped out of those many many hands, and went leaping of themselves; the brands went astray, missing the familiar hand of their heavenly master. As a man beats a horse that loathes the bit, – some stranger, a novice untaught, flogging a restive nag, as he tries again and again in vain, and the defiant beast knows by instinct the changeling hand of an unfamiliar driver, leaping madly, rearing straight into the air with hind-hooves planted immovable, lifting the forelegs and pawing out to the front, raising the neck till the mane is shaken abroad over both shoulders at once: so the [cont.]

1.319–321 (I pp. 26–27)

monster laboured with this hand or that to lift the fugitive flash of the roving thunderbolt.

[321] Well, at the very time when Cadmos paid his visit to Arima in his wanderings,

1.363–371 (I pp. 28–29)

[363] But Typhoeus was no longer to hold the gear of Zeus. For now Zeus Cronides along with Archer Eros left the circling pole, and met roving Cadmos amid the mountains on his wandering search; then he devised with him an ingenious plan, and entwined the deadly threads of Moira’s spindle for Typhon. And Goatherd Pan who went with him gave Zeus Almighty cattle and sheep and rows of horned goats. Then he built a hut with mats of wattled reeds and fixed it on [cont.]

1.372–395 (I pp. 30–31)

the ground: he put on Cadmos a shepherd’s dress, so that no one could know him in disguise, when he had clad his sham herdsman in this make-believe costume; he gave clever Cadmos the deceiving panpipes, part of the plot to pilot Typhaon to his death.

[377] Now Zeus called the counterfeit herdsman and the winged controller of generation,^a and disclosed this one common plan: “Look alive, Cadmos, pipe away and there shall be fine weather in heaven! Delay, and Olympos is scourged! for Typhoeus is armed with my heavenly weapons. Only the aegis-cape is left me; but what will my aegis do fighting with Typhon’s thunderbolt? I fear old Cronos may laugh aloud, I am shy of the proud neck of my lordly adversary Iapetos! I fear Hellas even more, that mother of romances – what if one of that nation call Typhon Lord of Rain, or Highest, and Ruling in the Heights,^b defiling my name! Become a herdsman for one day-dawn; make a tune on your mindbefooling shepherd’s pipes, and save the Shepherd of the Universe, that I may not hear the noise of Cloud-gatherer Typhoeus, the thunders of a new^c impostor Zeus, that I may stop his battling with lightnings and volleying with thunderbolts! If the blood of Zeus is in you, and the breed of Inachian Io,^d bewitch Typhon’s wits by the sovereign remedy of your guileful pipes and [cont.]

^a Eros.

^b The first two epithets are well-known titles of Zeus.

^c The other one presumably was Salmoneus, see Virgil, Aen. vi. 585 ff.

^d Zeus = Io ––> Epaphos = Libye ––> Belos ––> Agenor = Argiope ––> Cadmos.

1.396–424 (I pp. 32–33)

their tune! I will give you ample recompense for your service, two gifts: I will make you saviour of the world’s harmony, and the husband of the lady Harmonia. You also, Love, primeval founder of fecund marriage, bend your bow, and the universe is no longer adrift. If all things come from you, friendly shepherd of life, draw one shot more and save all things. As fiery god, arm yourself against Typhon, and by your help let the fiery thunderbolts return to my hand. All-vanquisher, strike one with your fire, and may your charmed shot catch one whom Cronion did not defeat; and may he have madness from the mind-bewitching tune of Cadmos, as much as I had passion for Europa’s embrace!”

[408] With these words Zeus passed away in the shape of the horned Bull, from which the Tauros Mountain takes its name.

[409] But Cadmos tuned up the deceitful notes of his harmonious reeds, as he reclined under a neighbouring tree in the pasturing woodland; wearing the country garb of a real herdsman, he sent the deluding tune to Typhaon’s ears, puffing his cheeks to blow the soft breath. The Giant loved music, and when he heard this delusive melody, he leapt up and dragged along his viperish feet; he left in a cave the flaming weapons of Zeus with Mother Earth to keep them, and followed the notes to seek the neighbouring tune of the pipes which delighted his soul. There he was seen by Cadmos near the bushes, who was sore afraid and hid in a cleft of the rock. But the monster Typhoeus with head high in air saw him trying to hide himself, and beckoned with voiceless signs, nor did he understand the trick in this beautiful music; then face to face with the shepherd, he held out one [cont.]

1.425–451 (I pp. 34–35)

right hand, not seeing the net of destruction, and with his middle face, blood-red and human in shape, he laughed aloud and burst into empty boasts:

[427] “Why do you fear me, goatherd? Why do you cover your eyes with your hand? A fine feat I should think it to pursue a mortal man, after Cronion! A fine feat to carry off panspipes alone with the lightning! What have reeds to do with flaming thunderbolts? Keep your pipes alone, since Typhoeus possesses another kind of organ, the Olympian, which plays by itself! There sits Zeus, without his clouds, hands unrumbling, none of his usual noise – he could do with your pipes. Let him have your handful of reeds to play. I don’t join worthless reeds to other reeds in a row and wave them about, but I roll up clouds upon clouds into a lump, and discharge a bang all at once with rumblings all over the sky!

[439] “Let’s have a friendly match, if you like. Come on, you make music and sound your reedy tune, I will crash my thundery tune. You puff our your cheek all swollen with wind, and blow with your lips, but Boreas is my blower, and my thunderbolts boom when his breath flogs them. Drover, I will pay you for your pipes: for when I shall hold the sceptre instead of Zeus, and drive the heavenly throne, you shall come with me; leave the earth and I will bring you to heaven pipes and all, with your flock too if you like, you shall not be parted from your herd. I’ll settle your goats over the backbone of Aigoceros, one of the same breed; or near the Charioteer, who pushes the shining Olenian She-goat48 in Olympos with his [cont.]

^a Amaltheia, who gave milk to the infant Zeus and was placed among the stars. She came from Olenos in the Peloponnese.

1.452–480 (I pp. 36–37)

sparkling arm.^a I’ll put your cattle beside the rainy Bull’s broad shoulder and make them stars rising in Olympos, or near the dewy turning-piont^b where Selene’s cattle send out a windy moo from their life-warming throats. You will not want your little hut. Instead of your bushes, let your flock go flashing with the ethereal Kids: I will make them another crib, to shine beside the Asses’ Crib and as good as theirs. Be a star yourself instead of a drover, where the Ox-driver is seen; wield a starry goad yourself, and drive the Bear’s Lycaonian wain. Happy shepherd, be heavenly Typhon’s guest at table: tune up on earth to-day, to-morrow in heaven! You shall have ample recompense for your song: I will establish your face in the starlit circle of heaven, and join your tuneful pipes to the heavenly Harp. If you like, I will give you Athena for your holy bride: if you do not care for Grayeyes,^c take Leto, or Charis, or Cythereia, or Artemis, or Hebe to wife. Only don’t ask me for my Hera’s bed. If you have a horse-master brother who can manage a team, let him take Helios’ fiery four-in-hand. If you want to wield the goatskin cape of Zeus, being a goatherd, I will make you a present of that too. I mean to march into Olympos caring nothing for Zeus unarmed; and what could Athena do to me with her armour? – a female! Srike up ‘See the Conquering Typhon comes,’ you herdsman! Sing the new lawful sovereign of Olympos in me, bearing the sceptre of Zeus and his robe of lightning!”

^a The allusions are to the constellations Capricorn, Aurgia, Capella, Haedi, the two Asses and the faint little group of stars between them known as the Manger, the arctic constellations already mentioned above, 165, and finally (467) to Lyra.

^b “The spring equinox,” see vi. 237. The puzzling word nussa is discussed by Stegemann, Astrologie, p. 30.

^c The standing epithet of Athena.

1.481–508 (I pp. 38–39)

[481] He spoke, and Adrasteia^a took note of his words thus far. But when Cadmos understood that the son of Earth had been carried by Fate’s thread into his hunting-net, a willing captive, struck by the delightful sting of those soul-delighting reeds, unsmiling he uttered this artful speech:

[486] “You liked the little tune of my pipes, when you heard it; tell me, what would you do when I strike out a hymn of victory on the harp of seven strings, to honour your throne? Indeed, I matched myself against Phoibos with his heavenly quill, and beat him with my own harp, but Cronides burnt to dust my fine ringing strings with a thunderbolt, to please his beaten son! But if ever I find again the swelling sinews,^b I will strike up a tune with my quills to bewitch all the trees and the mountains and the temper of wild beasts. I will drag back Oceanos, that coronet self-wreathed about the earth and old as earth herself,^c I will make him hasten and bring his stream rolling back upon himself round the same road. I will stay the army of fixed stars, and the racing planets, and Phaëthon,^d and Selene’s carriage-pole. But when you strike Zeus and the gods with your thunderbolt, do leave only the Archer, that while Typhon feasts at his table, I and Phoibos may have a match, and see which will beat which in celebrating mighty Typhon! And do not kill the dancing Pierides, that they may weave the women’s lay harmonious with our manly song when Phoibos or your shepherd leads the merry dance!”

[507] He finished; and Typhoeus bowed his flashing eyebrows and shook his locks: every hair belched [cont.]

^a Nemesis.

^b See 512; this is just mentioned by the way.

^c Oceanos is conceived as a river running round the earth at its limit.

^d Here, as often, the sun.

1.509–534 (I pp. 40–41)

viper-poison and drenched the hills.^a Quick he returned to his cave, took up and brought out the sinews of Zeus,^b and gave them to crafty Cadmos as the guest’s gift; they had fallen on the ground in the battle with Typhaon.

[513] The deceitful shepherd thanked him for the immortal gift; he handled the sinews carefully, as if they were to be strung on the harp, and hid them in a hole in the rock, kept safe for Zeus Giant-slayer. Then with pursed-up lips he let out a soft and gentle breath, pressing the reeds and stealing the notes, and sounded a tune more dainty than ever. Typhoeus pricked up all his many ears and listened to the melody, and knew nothing. The Giant was bewitched, while the false shepherd whistled by his side, as if sounding the rout of the immortals with his pipes; but he was celebrating the soon-coming victory of Zeus, and singing the fate of Typhon to Typhon sitting by his side. So he excited him to frenzy even more; and as a lusty youth enamoured is bewitched by delicious thrills by the side of a maiden his agemate, and gazes now at the silvery round of her charming face, now at a straying curl of her thick hair, now again at a rosy hand, or notes the circle of her blushing breast pressed by the bodice, and watches the bare neck, as he delights to let his eye run over and over her body never satisfied, and never will leave his girl – so Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm.

^a A memory of Hom. Il. i. 528 ê kai kuaneêsin ep’ ophrusi neuse Kroniôn, ambrosiai d’ ara chaitai eperrôsanto anaktos kratos ap’ athanatoioi megan d’ elelizen Olumpon.

^b The story is obscurely told, and probably Nonnos did not understand it; it is obviously old. By some device or by a well-aimed blow, Typhon had evidently cut the sinews out of Zeus’ arms, thus disabling him; Cadmos now gets them back by pretending that he wants them for harp-strings. So fantastic a tale may well be genuinely Oriental, as fits the locality, not Greek at all; there are in various parts of the world tales, mostly savage, of a similar loss and recovery of important parts of the body.

Book 2[edit]

2.1–19 (I pp. 44–45)

[1] And so Cadmos Agenorides remained there by the ankle of the pasturing woodland, drawing his lips to and fro along the tops of the pipes, as a pretended goatherd; but Zeus Cronides, unespied, uncaught, crept noiseless into the cave, and armed himself with his familiar fires a second time. And a cloud covered Cadmos beside his unseen rock, lest Typhoeus might learn this crafty plan, and the secret thief of the thunderbolts, and wise too late might kill the turncoat herdsman. But all the Giant wanted was, to hear more and more of the mind-bewitching melody with its delicious thrill. When a sailor hears the Siren’s perfidious song, and bewitched by the melody, he is dragged to a self-chosen fate too soon; no longer he cleaves the waves, no longer he whitens the blue water with his oars unwetted now, but falling into the net of melodious Fate, he forgets to steer, quite happy, caring not for the seven starry Pleiades and the Bear’s circling course: so the monster, shaken by the breath of that deceitful tune, welcomed with delight the wound of the pipes which was his escort to death.

2.20–50 (I pp. 46–47)

[20] But now the shepherd’s reed breathing melody fell silent, and a mantling shadow of cloud hid the piper as he cut off his tune. Typhoeus rushed head-in-air with the fury of battle into the cave’s recesses, and searched with hurried madness for the wind-coursing thunderbolt and the lightning unapproachable; with inquiring foot he chased the fire-shotten gleam of the stolen thunderbolt, and found an empty cave! Too late he learnt the craft-devising schemes of Cronides and the subtle machinations of Cadmos: flinging the rocks about he leapt upon Olympos. While he dragged his crooked track with snaky foot, he spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperfish bristles of his high head; as he marched, the solid earth did sink, and the steady ground of Cilicia shook to its foundations under those dragon-feet; the flanks of craggy Tauros crashed with a rumbling din, until the neighbouring Pamphylian hills danced with fear; the underground caverns boomed, the rocky headlands trembled, the hidden places shook, the shore slipt away as a thrust of his earthshaking foot loosened the sands.

[42] Neither pasture nor wild beasts were spared. Rawravening bears made a meal for the jaws of Typhaon’s bear-heads; tawny bodies of chest-bristling lions were swallowed by the gaping jaws of his own lion-heads; his snaky throats devoured the cold shapes of earthfed serpents; birds of the air, flying through untrodden space, there met neighbours to gulp them down their throats – he found the eagle in his home, and that was the food he relished most, because it is called the Bird of Zeus. He ate up the plowing [cont.]

2.51–79 (I pp. 48–49)

ox,^a and had no pity when he saw the galled neck bloody from the yoke-straps.

[53] He made the rivers dust, as he drank the water after his meal, beating off the troops of Naiads from the river-beds: the Naiad of the deeps made her way tripping afoot as if the river were a roadway, until she stood, unshod, with dry limbs, she a nymph, the creature of watery ways, and as the girl struggled, thrusting one foot after another along the thirsty bed of the stream, she found her knees held fast to the bottom in a muddy prison.

[60] The old shepherd, terrified to descry the manifold visage of this maddened monster, dropt his pipes and ran away; the goatherd, seeing the wide-scattered host of his arms, threw his reed flying to the winds; the hard-working plowman sprinkled not the new-scored ground with corn thrown behind him, nor covered it with earth, nor cut with earthshaking iron the land furrowed already by Typhon’s guiding hand, but let his oxen go loose. The earth’s hollows were bared, as the monster’s missile cleft it. He freed the liquid vein, and as the chasm opened, the lower channel bubbled up with flooding springs, pouring out the water from under the uncovered bosom of the ground, and rocks were thrown up, and falling from the air in torrential showers were hidden in the sea, making the waters dry land: and the hurtling masses of earth rooted themselves firmly as the footings of new-made islands. Trees were levered up from the earth by the roots, and the fruit fell on the ground untimely; the fresh-flowering garden was laid waste, the rosy meadows withered; [cont.]

^a An act of impiety: the plow-ox was exempted from sacrifice by Attic law, Aelian, V.H. v. 14.

2.141–142 (I pp. 54–55)

No! the water-snakes of the monster's viperish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison!

2.148 (I pp. 56–57)

[Typhon] an alien multiform!

2.237-247 (I pp. 62–63)

[237] So she spoke: and Sleep beating his shady wing sent all breathing nature to rest; but Cronion alone remained sleepless. Typhoeus stretched out his sluggish back and lay heavy upon his bed, covering his Mother Earth; she opened wide her bosom, and lurking lairs were hollowed out in a grinning chasm for the snaky heads which sank into the ground.

[244] The sun appeared, and many-armed Typhoeus roared for the fray with all the tongues of all his throats, challenging mighty Zeus. That sonorous voice reached where the root-fixt bed of refluent [cont.]

2.248-257 (I pp. 64–65)

Oceanos surrounds the circle of the world and its four divided parts, girdling the whole earth coronet-wise with encircling band; as the monster spoke, that which answered the army of his voices, was not one concordant echo, but a babel of screaming sounds: when the monster arrayed him with all his manifold shapes, out rang the yowling of wolves, the roaring of lions, the grunting of boars, the lowing of cattle, the hissing of serpents, the bold yap of leopards, the jaws of rearing bears, the fury of dogs. Then with his midmost man-shaped head the Giant yelled out threats against Zeus”

2.343 (I pp. 70–71)

I have two hundred hands to fight with,

2.364–384 (I pp. 72–73)

[364] Zeus flogging the clouds beat a thundering roar in the sky and trumpeted Enyo’s call, then fitted clouds upon his chest in a bunch as protection against the Giant’s missiles. Nor was Typhoeus silent: his bull-heads were self-sounding trumpets for him, sending forth a bellow which made Olympos rattle again; his serpents intermingled whistling for Ares’ pipes. He fortified the ranks of his high-clambering limbs, shielding mighty rock with rock until the cliffs made an unbroken wall of battlements, as he set crag by crag uprooted in a long line. It looked like an army preparing for battle; for side by side bluff pressed hard on bluff, tor upon tor, ledge upon ledge, and high in the clouds one tortuous ridge pushed another^a; rugged hills were Typhon’s helmets, and his heads were hidden in their beetling steeps. In that battle, the Giant had indeed one body, but many necks, but legions of arms innumerable, lions’ jaws with well-sharpened fangs, hairbrush of vipers mounting over the stars. Trees were doubled up by Typhaon’s hands and [cont.]

^a This passage is in imitation of Hom. Il. xvi. 215 aspis ar’ aspid’ epeide, korus korun, anera d’anêr.

2.385–390 (I pp. 74–75)

thrown against Cronides, and other fine leafy growths of earth, but all these Zeus unwilling burnt to dust with one spark of thunderbolt cast in heavy throw. Many an elm was hurled against Zeus with first coeval, and enormous plane-trees and volleys of white poplar; many a pit was broken in earth’s flank.

2.605–614 (I pp. 88–89)

[605] “The lightnings try to escape, and will not abide Enyo! How as it you could not escape a harmless little flash of lightning? How was it with all those innumerable ears you were afraid to hear a little rainy thud of thunder? Who made you so big a coward? Where are your weapons? Where are your puppyheads? Where are those gaping lions, where is the heavy bellowing of your throats like rumbling earthquake? Where is the far-flung poison of your snaky mane? Do not you hiss any more with that coronet of serpentine bristles? Where are the bellowings of your bull-mouths? Where are your hands and their volleys of precipi- [cont.]

2.615–624 (I pp. 90–91)

tous crags? Do you flog no longer the mazy circles of the stars? Do the jutting tusk of your boars no longer whiten their chins, wet with a frill of foamy drippings? Come now, where are the bristling grinning jaws of the mad bear?

[620]"Clodhopper, give place to the sons of heaven! For I with one hand have vanquished your hands, two hundred strong. Let three-headland Sicily receive Typhon whole entire, let her crush him all about her steep and lofty hills, with the hair of his hundred heads miserably bedabbled in dust.

2.631 ff. (I pp. 90–91)

Thus he mocked the half-living corpse of the son of Earth [Typhon]. Then the Cilician Tauros brayed a victorious noise on his stony trumpet for Zeus Almighty, while Cydnos danced a zigzag on his watery feet,

4.315–318 (I pp. 156–157)

On the way, Cadmos espied from the road a sacred place where the Pythian had noticed on a hill the ninecircling coil of the dragon's back, and put to sleep the deadly poison of the Cirrhaian^a serpent [echidna].

^a Loosely for "Delphic," Cirrha being the harbout-town below Delphi.

18.273 ff. (II pp. 82–83)

Show me yourself [Dionysus] like Ares, for he also brought low such another, Echidna's son, the gods' enemy, spitting the horrible poison of hideous Echidna. He had two shapes together, and in the forest he shook the twisting coils of his mother's spine. Cronos used this huge creature to confront the thunderbolt, hissing war with the snaky soles of his feet; when he raised his hands above the circle of the breast and fought against your Zeus, and lifted his high head, covered it with masses of cloud in the paths of the sky.

Sidonius Apollinaris[edit]

Carmen 15.19

[Athena's] left hand is covered by a shield filled with a likeness of the Phlegraean fray. In one part Enceladus brandishes Pindus, torn from its base, and sends it whirling to the stars, while Ossa is the missile of frenzied Typhoeus; Porphyrion snatches up Pangaeus, Damastor lifts up Rhodope along with Strymon’s spring, and when the glowing thunderbolt comes down he hurls the river at it and quenches it. In another part Pallas assails Pallas, but he has seen the Gorgon, and her spear is already too late, and encounters a solid corpse. 1 Elsewhere is seen Mimas flinging Lemnos against the aegis in a brother’s defence, while the island-missile shakes heaven with its impact. In yet another part is the multiple Briareus with his much-peopled body joining in the fray, carrying in his person a whole host all akin; you could see his hands on branching arms sprouting from a single source. To these monsters Vulcan had given by his skill not only forms but frenzy, so that he trembled at the very wrath which his art had counterfeited.

Suda[edit]

s.v. Tetuphômai

s.v. Tuphôn

s.v. Tuphôs

Modern[edit]

Burkert (1987)[edit]

p. 19

The Hittite text that has been called 'Kingship in Heaven' offers parallels to Hesiod's Theogony so close in outline and details that even sceptics could hardly object to their connection. ... These chronologically parallel correspondences of extremely strange events leave no doubt that the texts are related intimately, the Hittite text being earlier by some 500 years. ... but that diffusion, nay borowing of myth did occur in this case has not been seriously denied.

p. 20

'Kingship in Heaven' has a kind of sequel, 'The Song of Ullikummi': Kumbari, dethroned, takes revenge by copulating with a rock and engendering the diorite monster that is to overthrow the gods. This story evidently corresponds to the Greek story of Typhoeus/Typhon, who challenges the reign of Zeus after the Titans' defeat. The connection is made certain by a detail of locality: the gods in Ullikumi" assemble on Mount Casius in Cilicia, and it is on this very mountain that Zeus fights with Typhon, according to Apollodorus. The reference to a region where Hittite, Hurrite and Ugaritic influence meet could not be clearer.

Yet the Apollodorean version of the Typhon fight bears still stronger resemblance to another Hittite text, 'The Myth of Illuyankas', in which a dragon fights the weather god. In both tales the weather god is defeated by his adversary in the first onslaught, and vital parts of his body are taken form him — heart and eyes in the Hittite text, sinews in Apollodorus — which must be recovered by a trick, in order that the weather god may resume battle and emerge victorius. Illyuyankas is a 'snake', Typhoeus is endowed with snakeheads in Hesiod and has a snake's tale in Apollodorus and in sixth-century iconography.

p. 21

In fact Typhon has the character of a storm god himself. He is thus a complex figure that cannot be derived from one or two threads of a linear transmission. The complexity of mythical tradition even within the world of the Hittites is exemplified by a sudden reference in the 'Ullikummi' text to 'the golden copper knife with which they separated heaven and earth', which reflects a version of the cosmic myth especially close to that of the Hesiodic Kronos, who cuts Heaven from Earth with a steel knife, but apparently different from that of Kumarabi, as found in the text 'Kingship of Heaven'.

Even before the Hittite discoveries, Francis Macdonald Cornford, ... had recognized the remarkable structural resemblance of Hesiod's Theogony to the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma elish ...

p. 22

We finally begin to hear a many-voiced interplay of Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and West Semetic texts, all of which seem to have some connection with Hesiod. It is impossible, however, to construct a convincing stemma of these relations; perhaps it would not even make sense to try. It is better to acknowledge the lively communication between these societies and to take into account the general background of the myths when interpreting the special adaptations found in single texts that have survived by chance.

Dalley 1989 (2000)[edit]

Fontenrose[edit]

p. 75

The flight of the gods before Typhon and their change into animal forms, an episode known to Pindar, was introduced as a result of the identification of Typhon with the Egyption Set (p. 177); thus the Greeks explained the animal forms of Egyptian gods. The Pindar fragment does not mention Egypt, but for all later writers (e.g., Nicander, Ovid, Nigidius) who speak of the flight and transformation Egypt was the scene. Yet, it seems, both Zeus's defeat and the tricking of Typhon were absorbed into this episode. For Ovid and perhaps Pindar (who says πάντας τοὺς Θεούς), Zeus fled and turned into a ram (Ammon). According to Nigidius, the gods, on Pan's advice, tricked Typhon by taking animal forms, so that they could move about him without his recognizing them.¹²

¹² Nigid. ap. Scholl. BS in Germ. Arat. 289; cf. Hyg. Astr. 2.28, Ampel. 2.10.

pp. 121

The Hittite myth, which was aition of the Puruli Festival, is found in two versions. In the first the Weather God and the dragon Illuyankas met in combat at Kiskilussa, and the dragon maimed the Weather God, forcing him to retire from battle. Then the god sought the aid of the goddess Inaras, who prepared a lavish banquet ... inviting the dragon and his henchymen to the banquet ... ate and drank ... gorging until they could barely move ...

pp. 122

... the Weather God came and killed the dragon".

In the other version ... "Demand from them my heart and eyes."— or the dragon had earlier taken these members from the god, either in combat or by theft.

pp. 129–138 [Baʿal Zaphon vs. Yam]

p. 142

A variation upon Pan's luring of Typhon with fried fish by the seashore is the Scholiast's story that Pan caught him in fishing nets (p. 74); so Tiamat, Asag, and Leviathan were taken, as we [cont.]

p. 143

shall see (pp. 158, 209).

p. 145

Coincidence of theme and scene make it probable that the Greek, Hittite, and Canaanite myths discussed are all variants of one story of combat between god and monstrous enemy. It was localised in Syria and Cilicia, whence it came directly to Greece, as the Greek Typhon myth itself shows with its references to Arimoi, Cilicia, Corycian Cave, Mount Kasios, and Orontes River. Yet the story may not have had its origin in that region but further east.

p. 146

The hymn series called Lugal-e, found in Sumerian and Akkadian texts, tells of a battle between Ninurta and Asag (Asakku). Although translators disagree and [cont.]

p. 147

much remains unclear, it seems that the hero-god Ninurta was urged by his weapon Sharur to defend the land against the monster-demon Asag, who with his stone warriors raided the cities. Ninurta went forth to attack and destroy the enemy, but suffered, it seems, an initial setback, and fled. However, Sharur encouraged him, and Ninurta, returing to the attack, succeeded in killing the Asag. He received the kingship, which Anu, the father of the gods, had promised him, for killing Asag.²

p. 148

Probably the most widely known of Babylonian combat myths is the tale of Marduk against Tiamat, an episode of Enuma elish, often called the Epic of Creation.

p. 149

Tiamat produced reinforcements, eleven kinds of monstrous creatures, whose very appearance inspired terror: snakes, vipers, two kinds of dragons, great lions, fearful dogs, scorpian-men, storm-demons, dragonflies, bison, and creatures called lahâmu.

p. 150

Marduk, who agreed to take the field against Tiamat and her hosts on condition that the kingship of the gods be the prize of victory.

p. 151

Asag was a son of Anu and Ki, heaven and earth.

p. 152

3. ... The pairs Tiamat-Apsu and Tiamat-Kingu resemble Echidna and Typhon. Like Echidna, Tiamat was the mother of a monstrous progeny.

6. ... Labbu (and Asag, who was called labbu) was certainly a dragon in the literal sense of snake, and is probably the snake seen in conflict with a god in Mesopotamian sculpture and cylindar seals (e.g., figs. 18 and 19).

p. 155

9. ... As demons of wind and storm, Zu and Asag are very like Typhon, whom Hesiod calls the source of all winds.

p. 158

…This use of wind and stormflood as weapons against the monstrous enemy recalls Nonnos’ narrative … ²⁷

p. 161

21. Theme 8A (p. 85). In Enuma elish there is a hint that Marduk sufered temporary defeat and death in Tiamat's opening her mouth to swallow him: ...

It also appears that Asag temporarily worsted Ninurta: for Kramer says, "At first, however, he seems to have met more than his match and he 'flees like a bird,"

p. 177 ff.

No later than the fifth century B.C., and probably in the sixth, the Greeks had perceived similarity between their Typhon myth and the Egyptian myth of Set, Osiris, and Horos, and had identified Set with Typhon. In fact, they soon fused the two myths by inserting into the Typhon myth a flight of the gods to Egypt, where they escaped Typhon by assuming animal forms (p. 73)—an aition of the images of Egyptian gods in animal form—and Typhon's final resting place was sometimes identified with Lake Serbonis (p. 133). This ancient rapprochement of the two myths is in itself an indication that they were national variants of a common original; and this conclusion is supported by the presence in the Egyptian myth of most of the themes of the Greek myth.

p. 546

Ancient and modern authorities alike have derived [Typhon's] name from the root typh- "smoke." The deriviation, however, fails to convince me; why should smoke be considered Typhon's salient feature, even if he were primarily a volcano-demon? Wouldn't he more likely be called fire? In fact, his nature was manifold: he was not only river, spring, and volcano, but also sea and wind. His name is very likely not Greek; but though non-Hellenic etymologies have been suggested, I doubt that its meaning is now recoverable. It was easy, as Norman Douglas shows, for Typhon as a water-dragon to become a rain-dragon, and so a demon of violent storms and winds; then as hurricane-demon he easily became a demon of volcanic eruption and earthquake.²

² On Typhon from typh-: EM 772; LM 5.1441; Gruppe (1907) 102, 812, 1305; Dornseiff (1933) 18. Gruppe (812) suggests Semitic siphon "snake." Some scholars have connected the name with Canaanite zāphon "north": LM ibid.; Gruppe 102, 409; Sieppel (1939) 137 f.; in fact, Mount Kasios near Ugarit was given that name: see Gaster (1950) 169-171. English typhoon, as it happens, has nothing to do with Typhon, but is Chinese tai fung; LM 5.1442; Dornseiff 18; Ortiz (1947) 178.

Fowler[edit]

2013

p. 27

...

p. 28

Like Hekataios FGrHist 1 F 300 (ap. Hdt. 2.144.2; cf. 2.156.4, Aisch. Supp. 560), Herodotus equated Typhon with Egyptian Seth, making him the penultimate divine king of Egypt. Typhon lay hidden after his defeat by Horus in Lake Serbonis, a narrow, 100-km lagoon running parallel to the sea starting from a point 15 km east of Pelusian, near the easternmost mouth of the Nile.⁹⁹

...

Homer (Il. 2.783, cf. Hes. Th. 304 with West, Pindar fr. 93) puts Typhon εἰν Ἀρίμοις, a phrase he does not explain and which baffled the ancients; opinion was divided between [cont. p. 29]

p. 29

a people Arimoi and mountains Arima.¹⁰¹ Apollonios of Rhodes has Typhon blasted on Kaukaos (where there was a Typhonian Rock to commemorate the event) but staggering off to the Nysian plain and Lake Serbonis. In common with Apollodoros and other later accounts, Apollonios envisages a multi-stage fight, with incidents at various locations: a useful way for a mythographer to combine the claims of competing versions, but in this case the multiple staging could be an original part of the story, as appropriate to a battle of this magnitude. The report of Pher. fr. 54 makes it clear that Kaukasos was a way-station; after the mountain was set ablaze by Zeus' thunderbolt,¹⁰² Typhon fled to Pithekoussai, where early Greek settlers had drawn inferences from the regions's volcanoes. Strabo (13.4.6) knows a theory that arimos is Etruscan for πίθηκος; it is not impossible that Etruscan words were known to Greeks in Pherekydes day,¹⁰³ but of course we do not know that Pherekydes drew this connection, if it were there to draw. Possibly Pherekedes started the battle in Kilikia, where both Pindar and Aischylos<sip>104 have Typhon born (cf. Apollod., schol. B Il. 2.783); nearby Hittite place-names 'Arimmata' and 'Erimma', and the Hittite myth of the battle of the storm-god and Hedammu, make it quite probable that this was indeed the primary locale of the myth, subsequently transported westwards with the colonizers.¹⁰⁵ These writers agree too in imprisoning Typhon under Aitna, though Pindar adds in the first Pythian that his body stretched as far as Kymai. Pindar (fr. 91) also knows the story (common to Nikandros and Apollodoros) of how the gods, fleeing from Typhon, changed themselves to animals and fled to Egypt, where similar stories of gods changing into animals in battle were told—another link with that country.¹⁰⁶ If Egyptian Kaison figured in Akousilaos' version, perhaps he had this story too. We may rule it out for Pherekydes: when the scholiast says that Pherekydes did not send Typhon to Syria, 'as Apollonios says', he means he did not send him to Lake Serbonis near Kasion. to complete the list of early variants, the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (32) strangely puts Typhon under a Boiotian mountain (cf. schol. Pind. Ol. 4.11, Tzetzes on Lykoph. Alex. 177, who reports also Phrygia as [cont. p. 30]

¹⁰¹ Hesiod, loc. cit., says it is Echidna's dwelling place, and puts it beneath the earth; this was eventually placed at the swampy lake Gygaia: cf. Hdt. 1.93. Lykoph. Alex. 1353, Xanthos FGrHist 765 F 13, Lane Fox Traveling Heroes 306, and L. Robert, BCH 106 (1982) 334-59.

¹⁰² As Fontenrose, 'Typhon among the Arimoi' 77 notes, this incident probably furnished the etymon for the name of the mountain. Note that this fr. is uniquely cited as Pherekydes in the Theogony', see Part B, "The Structure of Pherekydes' Book' ad fin.

¹⁰³ See §2.1 ad fin., §18.6. By Virgil's time (Aen. 9.716) 'Inarime' from εἰν Ἀρίμοις (written as one word in some Homeric MSS: see Radt on Strabo loc. cit.), is an alternative name for the island; this at least betrays the scholar's hand, and the Etruscan etymology (unconfirmed from Etruscan sources), rather too good to be true, could also be learnet speculation.

¹⁰⁴ Pind. Pyth. 8.16 (further in Pindar, Ol. 4.6-7, Pyth. 1.15-38, frr. 91-3); Aisch. PV 351.

¹⁰⁵ Bonnet, Typhon et Baal Saphon; Watkins, How to kill a Dragon 450-9; Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes 299-314.

¹⁰⁶ J. G. Griffiths, 'The Flight of the Gods Before Typhon'.

p. 30

another possibility); Xanthos the Lydian 765 F 13 put his resting-place in his native country, in the Katakekaumene, the volcanic plain on the upper Hermos.¹⁰⁷

¹⁰⁷ Above, n. 101. Further variants and full references in Roscher, Lex. s.v. Typhoeus, Typhjon 1436-8.

Gantz[edit]

p. 49

Pindar ... Fragments of lost poems ... and. in a context where divine transformations are being considered , apparently had all the gods change into animals as they fled him (frr 92, 93, 91 SM).

Kirk, Raven, and Schofield[edit]

p. 59

52 Σb in Homeri Il. II, 783 φασι τὴν ...

52 They say that Ge in annoyance at the slaughter of the Giants slandered Zeus to Hera, and that Hera went off and told Kronos about this. He gave her two eggs, smearing them with his own semen, and telling her two store them underground: from them, he said, a daimon would be produced who would displace Zeus from power. And she in anger put them under Arimon in Cilicia. But when Typhon had been produced, Hera had become reconciled to Zeus, and revealed everything; and Zeus blasted Typhon and named the mountain Aetna.

The exegetical class of older Homeric scholia retains much learned material from the Hellenistic era (so H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem I (Berlin, 1969), xii). This particular comment adds a Homeric [cont. on p. 60]

p. 60

element (arimon) to those seen in fifth-century poetry (Pindar Pyth. I, 16ff., Aeschlus Pr. 351ff.). Orphic influence is also possible, although eggs are placed not in the windy wastes of Aither or Erebos (as in the Rhapsodic account) but in Gaia. That Kronos not Chronos is named is not necessarily important (see p. 57). The notable thing is that Kronos impregnates two eggs (why two?) with his own seed, and that the eggs have to be placed underground, κατὰ γῆς, possibly in a recess of some kind — here, under a mountain.

Lane Fox[edit]

p. 244

Centuries before Homer’s Olympus, the Jebel Aqra was the mountain Sapuna, the residence of Baal, one of the great gods of the Canaanite people. …

p. 245

…from his victories over death (Mot) and the sea (Yamm), beating them with his two huge clubs and his bolts of thunder and lightning.

Ras Shama lies on the southern side of this awesome mountain and …

Even so, Baal was not the first god on the peak. Earlier settlers in North Syria, the Hurrians, had known the mountain as "Hazzi" and had placed their own Storm God Teshub, on the summit. Hittite rulers then took over this name for the mountain and for the weather-god on its heights. They too sang stories of his victories, including a victory over the sea by which he secured his kingship in heaven. ...

p. 259

p. 264

When the Hittite tablets began to be studied in the 1930s, a resemblance was already evident. Improved knowledge of the Hittite texts has made the resemblance very much stronger: no specialist who has kept up with the subject would now contest it.¹²

p. 265

The influence of Near Eastern stories on the Greek story in Hesiod is evident, but the date of this influence remains very controversial. [cont.]

p. 266

Scholars have tended to pose a choice, either an influence in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 BC) or one in the eighth century BC, much nearer to Hesiod's own time. The early date ...

p. 282

Meanwhile on the south side of the Jebel Aqra there were old Canaanite stories of the Storm God’s triumph over a snaky monster too. He was “Ltn” (“Litanu” or “Lotan”), “the coiling serpent, the tyrant of seven heads.” We know about him from fragmentary tablets found at Ras Shamra which date to the thirteenth century BC, but we can be sure that his story continued to be told in the Levant in the ninth and eighth centuries. It left a mark then on the contemporary prophets and psalmists, who can still be read in the Hebrew Scriptures. Just as Baal had defeated snaky “Litanu,” so Yahweh was said to have bound snaky “Leviathan.”

p. 283

It is arguable whether this fuller second description of Typhon and his battle featured in Hesiod's original poem or not, but for the moment the important point is that these Greek stories inarguably match details of the stories of combat and snaky battles in the earlier Hittite stories. ... Like the Storm God, Zeus then has to contend with a snaky monster whom he beats and "lashes" as his captive. Like the far flung sickle of Cronos, the battles and travails of Typhon are subjects for a historical and topographical treatment ...

p. 284

We happen to have three different stories of the contests of the Hittite Storm God and a snaky opponent. Two are extremely old and are known only in a single text from c. 1250 BC which ascribes them to one Kella, the priest of the "storm-god of Nerick." The other the "song of Hedammu," began, like so much else, as an older story which the Hittites took over.

Kella the storytelling priest told how the storm god was once defeated by a hostile snake. The Storm God summoned the other gods for advice, with the result that the goddess Inara prepared a feast with copious wine and other drink. ...

In the second story, the serpent began by defeating the Storm God, whereupon he stole the god's heart and eyes. The Storm God married a poor man's daughter and fathered a son. ...

p. 285

The first story is explicitly linked to the role of the king in the important purulli festival...

The topography of the two stories is different. ... The first of the two stories places the Storm God's battle at Kiskilussa, a place name which scholars locate in northern Anatolia near the Kizil Irmak river, about 40 miles inland from the southern coast of the Black Sea. In the second story, however, the Storm God is fighting "by the sea." This sea could be our Black Sea north of Kiskilussa, but the story could also have travelled southwards as Hittite rule extended there too. Then the "sea" would be the Mediterranean sea off Cilicia, the kizzuwatna of Hittite topography.

...

We also have a third Hittite story, which is separate from the two told long ago by Kella the priest.¹⁵ The essence of it is that the storm-god Teshub confronted a snaky monster called Heddamu which the previous king in heaven, Kumarbi, had raised against him by fathering it on a daughter of the sea-god. Once again he was saved by the loyal goddess Inara. This time she lured the snake-monster from the sea, charmed him with music, plied him with drink and appeared naked before him, exciting him sexually. Our text of [cont.]

p. 286

the story unfortunately breaks off here, but we know that Hedammu was then defeated by the weather-god: perhaps he was thrown into the sea. As his next move, Kumarbi chose to send a monster of stone to do battle; we now see why. Unlike the snake it would be unmoved by drink and sex.

For some time scholars did not realize that the surviving fragments of this story belonged among the other succession-struggles between the gods of the Hittite heaven. In fact, Hedammu was one story in the same group and belonged, therefore, in that very "song of kingship" which which we have found to have been sung in honour of Mount Hazzi, the Jebel Aqra. ... At the begining of Hedammu's story, a god surely Kumbari himself, declares: [I come] from the mountain "Mountain"; [I raised] a dragon."¹⁶ Thie "Mountain" is none other than Mount Hazzi the Jebel Aqra. The story of Hedammu was not only sung by choirs on the mountain's lower slopes: it was set on and around Mount Hazzi itself. ...

Most remarkably, clear echos of these three old Hittite stories survive in out-of-the-way late Greek sources, somehow resonating across as much as 1,500 years. Three particular texts have long been seen to be relevant. One is an arudite poem on fishing by Oppian (c. AD 180); another, the first two books of a long, learned and highly rhetorical epic about Dionysus by Nonnus, ... The third ... Apollodorus ... .

p. 287

When Oppian alludes to the war of Zeus and Typhon, he describes how Typhon was lured by a banquet (a "fish-picnic") and came out of his capacious pit to eat on the seashore: Zeus blasted him there with thunder and lightening and beat his heads on the rocks. The luring of the snake-monster by a banquet goes back to one of the two old Hittite tales which were combined and told by Kella the priest c. 1250 BC. Nonnus, by contrast, describes gigantic "Star Wars" between Zeus and Typhon in which Typhon steals the storm-god's thunderbolts anf lightening and also takes away his sinews. ... but he is then enchanted by music ... and falls into a musical trance, ... The music in his [Nonnus'] story recalls the music which charmed Hedammu in the old Hittite song; the encounter, like Hedammu's, is also by the seashore; ... the theft of Zeus's sinews recalls the theft of the Storm God's "heart and eyes" in the Hittite song too.²¹

p. 288

[In Apollodorus, Zeus attacked Typhon] with thunderbolts and at close quarters with an "adamantine sickle." He chase him precisely to Mount Kasios, the Jebel Aqra, but Typhon overcame him, seized the sickle and cut out his sinews. ... Again the Hittite echoes here are clear: the setting on Mount Kasios, the theft of the sinews (in Hittite, the "heart and eyes"), the use of the adamantine sickle" (surely the same sickle which had castrated Heaven and which the Hittite gods were to use in their next round of cosmic battles). The name Delphyne is unique in Greek myths but it can be given a Hittite derivation.

p. 298

In Greek the snake-monster became "Typhon," a name of uncertain derivation. "Typhon" did not derive from the Phoenicians' name "Saphon" for Jebel Aqra mointain: a mountain, anyway, is not an apt origin for a snake. Perhaps, as Posidonius claimed, the nearby Orontes river had had a suggestive earlier name now lost to us, but the likelier guess, despite the short "ŭ" of his name, is that "typhon" derived from the Greek's own tūphōn, their "smoking" and "smouldering," like the "smoking" monster whom Zeus set on fire. The change in the "u"-sound was perhaps more easily made during a transfer between two Greek words.⁵³

p. 405

p. 407 n. 53

LSJ[edit]

Τυ_φώς , ῶ, ὁ

II. as Appellat. τυ_φώς, gen. “τυφῶ” A.Ag.656; dat. “τυφῷ” Ar.Lys.974 (anap.) (but later writers used the form τυφῶν, ῶνος, v. Τυφῶν 11.1):—whirlwind, typhoon, ll. cc., S.Ant.418.

Ogden[edit]

2013a

p. 11

The late-third-millenium BC Sumerian epic Lugal-e describes the attempt of Azag, a hardwood tree, child of heaven and earth, manifest as a venomous, hissing serpent, to seize the throne of the storm god Ninurta, who deploys winds and floods as weapons. In the course of their battle both of them set fire to the landscape. The correspondences with the Theogony's description of Zeus' battle with Typhon are ostensible.²¹ ...

The fourth tablet of the Middle-Babylonian (early second-millenium BC) Akkadian Enūma eliš or Epic of Creation narrates the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, the female, serpentine, multi-headed embodiment of the sea and of chaos. ... Marduk's battle against Tiamat is illustrated on some [cont.]

p. 12

fine tenth to seventh-century BC Neo-Babylonian cylinder seals from Nimrud on which the god is brandishing a thunderbolt in each hand, leaps over the back of a long rampant serpent.²³

The story of Baal-Sapon's fight against Yam is preserved in a series of fourteenth-century cueiform tablets unearthed at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) ... According to two principal tablets, El grants rule to Yam(m)(u), the principle of the sea, but Baal-Sapon (also known as Hadad), the storm-god whom Yam seeks to make his slave, challenges him. Baal-Sapon defeats Yam with two throwing-clubs (i.e., it seems, thunderbolts) named 'Expeler' and 'Chaser', and mafe for him by the smith-god Kothar, which fly from his hands like eagles. ...

Cuneiform tablets of c.1250 BC preserve the Hittite priest Kella's aetiology of the purulli festival in two versions. The aetiology is the tale of the storm-god Tarhunna's (Tarhunta's) fight against the serpent Illuyanka(s) in Kiskilussa. Illuyanka's name in fact means 'Serpent', indeed it may be a description as opposed to a proper name. ...

²⁴ ... Fontenrose 1959: pp. 129-38; ... Lane Fox 2008: 257-8.

p. 13

In another fragmentary but evidently quite similar Hittite dragon-slaying myth inscribed at a similar point to the Illuyanka myth, this one derived from the Hurrians, the storm-god Teshub (Teššub) asks his sister Sauska (equivalent to Inara) to seduce the voracious sea-serpent Hedammu, sired by the underworld god Kumarbi ... and bequiling him with music, her naked body, a love-potion, and some beer. She allows Hedammu to make love with her be fore leading him out onto dry land. The finale is missing, but no doubt Hedammu was ambushed by Teshub once he left the protection of the sea.²⁷

²⁷ ... Penglase 1994: 189-90, M.L. West 1997: 104, 278-80 ...

p. 14

In fact the only Graeco-Roman drakōn-slaying myth that can seriously be argued to exhibit the influence of Near Eastern antecedents is that of Typhon. As we will see, a plausible case can be made that this was shaped by the Canaanite-Ugaritic myth of Baal-Sapon against Yam and Litan and the Hittite myths of Tarhunna against Illuyanka and Teshub against Hedammu, the later Hurrian-derived. This is because of the level of derived correspondences that can be cited between the Near-Eastern and Greek narratives and because of the likelihood that the toponyms of the zone in which the Near-Eastern versions were developed, [cont].

p. 15

around the Jebel Aqra and across the gulf of Issus in Cilicia, are refracted in the Greek traditions (Ch. 2).

p. 75

Of all Greek drakontes, Typhon is the one for whom the strongest case for specific Near Eastern influence has been mounted. It is now usually held that the myth of Zeus' battle with Typhon effectively originated in an interpretio Graeca of a mythical battle between a storm god and a sea-serpent that had been located since the age of the Hurrians on ancient Syria's (modern Turkey's) towering Mt. Kasios, now Jebel Aqra, over the summit of which thunderbolts continue to flash. For the Hurrians, who had known the mountain as Hazzi (probably the origin of the the Greek name Kasios), the storm god in question had been Teshub and the dragon Hedammu. For the Hittites he had been Tarhunna, and the dragon Illuyanka. For the Canaanites, for whom the mountain was Sapuna, the storm-god in question had been Baal-Sapon, and he had been victorious over Yam and Litan/Lotan, the biblical Leviathan, the sea-serpents that were embodiments of chaos (all these tales are laid out in the introduction).⁴⁰

p. 77

Of the three antecedent myths mentioned in association with Mt. Kasios, it is the Hittite tale of Illuyanka and Tarhunna, laid out in its two versions in the introduction, that seems to exhibit the closest fit with the Typhon myth.:⁴⁹ ...

p. 78

It is a curiosity that the Greek narratives that chime most strikingly with the Hittite are the late ones of Apollodorus, Oppian, and Nonnus. ...

The tradition of the battle between Zeus and Typhon exhibits a general similarity with some other Near-Eastern myths.⁵² It bears comparison with two myths of Ninurta. The first is that of the late-third-millennium Sumerian poem ‘’Lugal-e’’, in which the hissing sea-monster Azag-Labbu, born of Earth and Heaven, attempts to seize the throne of Ninurta who, qua storm-god, deploys winds and floods against his opponents, whilst both of them set fire to the landscape (introduction).⁵³ The second [Near-Eastern myth similar to the Zeus Typhon tradition] is that of the Akkadian epic Anzu, first attested in the early second millennium BC. although the monster in question is not a dragon of any sort. Here Ninurta (Ninggirsu) faces Anzu, the child of earth and floodwaters born in a mountain. Anzu takes the form of a huge bird, a lion-headed eagle, and he provokes whirlwinds by flapping his wings. He is also, somehow, identified with a mountain in which he is born. Anzu attempts to seize Enlil's power whilst he takes a bath, by stealing the Tablet of Destinies. But Ninurta, again a master of storms, summons together seven winds against him. He eventually kills Anzu by shooting an arrow into his mountain and flaying him with floods.⁵⁴

From at least the time of Hecataeus, the Greeks syncretized Typhon with the Egyptian Seth, the great opponent of Osiris. No doubt Diodorus' tale of Osiris and Typhon preserve something of what Hecataeus had said. This identification persisted to the end of antiquity, and came to thrive above all in the Greek Magical Papyri and the curse tablets of late antiquity.⁵⁶

⁵⁶ Hecataeus FGrH 1 F300; so too Pindar F91 SM, Herodotus 2. 144, Strabo C803, Plutarch Isis and Osiris, Moralia esp. 355f., 361d, 363de, 367ab, 374c, 376f-377a. Diodorus 1. 21. The Greek ...

p. 217

Similar conceits had probably been deployed already in Nicander's description of Typhon's battle against the gods, and this may have gone back in its essentials to Pindar. Nicander's Typhon ... chased the Olympian gods to Egypt, where they all transformed themselves into different animals in order to hide from him: 'But ... do so.'¹² There is surely a latent reciprocity here. The tale serves, of course, as an aetiology of the animal-headed gods of Egypt.

¹² Nicander apud Antonius Liberalis 28; Pindar F91 SM (the gods change themselves into animals when chased by Typhon). So too Ovid Metamorphoses 5.319-31, Ampelius 2. 10, ... Lucian On Sacrifices 14, ...

2013b

p. 21

Earth produced three sets of offspring in her doomed attempt to overthrow the Olympian gods: the Titans, the Giants and then Typhon. ... But the Giants and Typhon resemble each other closely both in their serpentine lower haves and in their ultimate fates, with Enceladus and Polybotes, like Typhon ending their career pinned beneath islands—indeed, the very same one, Sicily in the case of Enceladus. Since Snakes were characteristically reguarded as creatures of the earth (M2.b.i, M3.a), it is wholy appropriate that the Giants and Typhon alike should be given serpentine form: they are produced from the depths of the earth and returned to these depths in defeat.

p. 23

The detail of the gods flight to Egypt (cf, 8) pays tribute to an old Greek aetiology of Egypt's animal-shaped gods.

Penglase[edit]

1994 edition

p. 1

Parallels between Near Eastern and Greek myths, and the question of influence have been pursued for a long time with varying degrees of success. Some Near Eastern, including Mesopotamian, origins and influence have long been generally accepted in certain areas of Greek religion and mythology. Possibly the most famous parrallels with Near eastern material are found in Hesiod's Theogony. Close parallels in the succession myth which forms the backbone of [cont.]

p. 2

the plot in the work have been found with Hurrian/Hittite and Mesopotamian, specifically Babylonian. cosmological myths, and these have been discussed at length since the discovery and reconstruction of the Near Eastern texts.¹ The difficulty in the comparison in many cases is just what kind of connection is involved. Near Eastern influence is generally accepted in the case of Hesiod's Theogony.

p. 44

THE MYTH OF ANZU

There are two versions of this myth, the SB and the OB. ...

p. 54

Lugale is another work which ...

p. 55

birth of Asag from the union of Heaven and Earth (An and Ki). ...

p. 87 (= p. 104 in the 1994 edition)

The pairing of male and female monsters, the Pythian monster and Typhaon, in the long digression [in the Hymn to Apollo] consisting of the story of Hera and Typhaon, also recalls a feature in Enuma Elish. There the goddess Tiamat and her monstrous son, Qingu, form a pair of elemies of the hero, Marduk (Tablet III.37-49). The male and female monsters are split between the two parallel Greek versions. In the hymn, Apollo is opposed by the female monster; and Zeus fights against the male form of the monster, Typhaon. ... However, as the presentation of the story is in the hymn, it is closely parallel to [cont.]

p. 88

Marduk's combat regarding the sexes of the opponents. It is also parallel in that the male monster is subordinate to the female.

In this version the Pythian serpent and Typhaon are the two major forms of the heroic deity's opponent, which in Mesopotamia are the Anzu and Asag type as seen with Ninurta, the other being type being the female monster-goddess, the enemy of Marduk. Typhaon parallels Anzu and Azog, while the Pythian monster parallels Tiamat.

p. 152

The Near Eastern derivation of aspects of the Theogony has been generally recognized, and in keeping with this the myth of Zeus' birth and the Typhoeus episode show some specific parallels with Mesopotamian myths. The birth myth ... while the correspondences of the Typhoeus myth in Hesiod to Near Eastern, including Mesopotamian, myths is confined to a small number of motifs. In the later account of the combat in Apollodorus, which is included for the sake of comparison with the Hesiodic version, many Near Eastern ideas and motifs are visible.

p. 156

The Near Eastern origin of major aspects of Hesiod's Theogony has been recognized from the time of the discovery of the Hittite texts Kingship in Heaven and The Myth of Ullikummi. The succession myth forms the backbone of the Theogony, and this idea is generally considered to have been derived from the Near East. It closely parallels similar ideas found in Hittite, Ugaritic, Phoenician and Mesopotamian myths, but motifs are in general most like those in the Hittite epics. The parallels and the issues have been discussed in great detail in recent decades and there is no need for further discussion of these here.⁶ ...

Other parallels with the Mesopotamian myths are found in Zeus' [cont.]

p. 157

combat against the monster, named Typhoeus, Typaon or Thyphon, although the parallels in the case of this combat in Hesiod's Theogony are of a general nature.

p. 161 (= 1994: p. 191)

In Apollodorus' version [of Zeus' defeat of Typhon] there are many parallels with Near Eastern myths, both Hittite and Mesopotamian.

p. 163

A number of motifs of this [Apollodorus'] myth of Typhon parallel motifs in extant combat myths of the Near East. Parallel features are found in Marduk's epic Enuma Elish, Ninurta's myths, in both the combats against Anzu and Asag and also, to some extent, in the Hittite myths concerning Illuyanka and Ullikummi.

One such motif ...

p. 199

The compelling conclusion which is indicated by this investigation of parallels is that extensive influence from Mesopotamia exists in these Homeric Hymns and in the works of Hesiod,

p. 201

The early date of influence of these myths on Hesiod's work is consistent with the succession myth in the Theogony. ... this indicates that with the succession myth, which relates to both Mesopotamian and Hittite material. Hesiod was merely reproducing traditional material, in the same way as he was with the Prometheus and Pandora myth.

p. 202

Another feature of the Theogony speaks fotr a role of Hesiod as predominantly a compiler, in which function he presents material older than his own time. The episode of the birth of Zeus (lines 477-500), whjich also shows Mesopotamian ideas, seems to be like a Homeric Hymn in form, and together with all of the other episodic esctions of this part of the work, the Titanomachy, the Tyhonomachy and the Prometheus episode, this indicates that the poet is combining older ideas

Watkins[edit]

p. 448

It is now generally assumed, by 'inspection' that the myth of Typhoeus or Typhon (...), the monster who threatened the sovereignty of Zeus, whom Zeus overcame and cast into Tartarous, was diffused into Greece from Anatolian Hittite, where it is attested as the myth of Illuyankas, the serpent-adversary slain by the Storm God.

West 1966[edit]

p. 19

This Succession Myth has parallels in oriental mythology which are so striking that a connexion is incontestable. The occur principally in Hittite and Akkadian texts, and in ...

p. 20

(a) Hittite Texts

The texts ...

p. 21

A sequel is recorded in a longer text entitled The Song of Ullikummi.¹ Kumarbi plans evil against the Weather god. He goes and lies with a huge rock, which duly gives birth to a stone child, Ullikummi. The child rapidly grows to a prodigious size, and soon reaches the sky, disrupting devine communications and constituting a serious threat to the gods. ... Like Zeus again, [the Hurrian Weather god] is threatened even after his victory by a prodigious monster, and defeats him.

The close similarity of this Hurrian Succession Myth to that in Hesiod was recognized as soon as the text was read.² ...

There are other texts in which the Weather-god has different [cont.]

p. 22

monsters to face. one of these agrees remarkably with Apollodorus' account of Zeus' battle with Typhon; see on Th. 853.

(b) Akkadian Texts

After the Epic of Gilgameš, the most celebrated poem which has come down to us from ancient Babylon is undoubtedly that known originally after its opening words as Enûma Eliš, 'When on high',¹ Its subject is war among the gods, the emergence of Marduk as their king, his creation of the world, and his organizations of it. It was the official, canonical text regularly used in the Babylonian New Year festival.

The mythological background of the narrative is Sumerian. as shown by the names of the gods involved. The language is the epic dialect of Akkadian, and the epic quality of the oomposition ...

The poem consisted of some 1,050 verses, of which ... The frgments come from various sites and are of widely different dates; the oldest were written c. 1000 B.C. The date of composition must have been somewhat earlier. ... indicate the First Babylonian Dynasty (c. 1895-1595, according to the current chronology).³

In the begininging, before heaven or earth or any other gods existed, Apsû and Tiâmat mingled their waters in a single body. Apsû represents the sweet, male waters, Tiâmat the bitter. female waters of the sea. Whithin Apsû and Tiâmat, gods came into being: first ...

p. 23

But Ea casts a magic sleep on Apsû, strips him of his regali (and thereby of his strength), and slays him. A new régime. Ea begets Marduk, whose fearsome appearance seems to alarm some of the older gods. They incite Tiâmat to renew the war against the younger gods, She creates eleven species of monsters to serve as allies. Ea goes out to fight her, but is overcome with fear and returns. Anu goes out instead, with the same result. Finally Marduk agrees to go, on condition that he be made king of the gods. He arms himself with a bow, a club, a net, lightning, and the four winds; in addition he creates seven more terrible winds, which fill Tiamat's belly when she opens her mouth to devour him. Unable to close her mouth again, she is torn open by an arrow from Marduk's bow, while her helpers are entangled in his net. ...

The similarities between this story and the Hesiodic Succession Myth, while not so striking as those beween the latter and the Hurrian myth, are nevertheless unmistakable, and include some features absent from the Hurrian.

And before Marduk can succeed [cont.]

p. 24

to the throne, he must, like Zeus, encounter and defeat in battle a huge and fearsome opponent In Enûma Eliš it is the primeval mother herself, Tiâmat: Zeus' antagonist is not Gaia, but Gaia's son. ... When we compare the role of Tiâmat in Enûma Eliš, the odd little inconsistency in Gaia's character appears in a new light.¹

p. 28

The obvious and inescapable conclusion is that the Succession Myth came to Greece from the East.

p. 244

There is a similar catalogue of monsters in Enûma Eliš (i. 140-2 al.), created by Tiamat to help in battle: for details, and suggestions on their relevance to Greek myth, see C.Q. 1963, p. 161.

p. 252

Τυφάονα: the same as the Τυφωεύς whose birth and nature are described in 820 ff. Goettling's argument ...

The origin of the name and its variant forms is unexplained; the Greeks naturally associated it with τύφω, cf. sch. 304 and 821, Call, H. 4. 141, Suda s.v. τετύφωμαι, τυφών, τυφώς, Et, magn. s.v. Τυφών, ... On modern attempts to connect it with the Semetic (Baal-) Sapōn, see G, Zuntz, Mus. Helv. 8, 1951, pp. 28-34; ...

p. 379

The myth of a battle between the highest god and a physically or morally repulsive opponent is very widespread. But there are three particular features of the Typhonomachy that link it with the Near Eastern Succession Myth. Firstly Typhon is himself associated with southern Asia Minor, at least as early as Pindar, and perhaps in the pre-Homeric tradition that located him ... Secondly, he is the father of a whole band of monsters who remarkably resemble Tiamat's progeny in Enûma Eliš ... there is a Greek tradition of ... the battle between Chronos and the Ophionidai, ... Thirdly the dangerous [cont.]

p. 380

monster at this stage of the Succession Myth corresponds to Ullikummi in the Hurrian version; see p. 21.

Interpretation of the Typhoeus myth is complicated by the foreign elements added to it in later antiquity. As early as Hecataeus (I F 300, ap. Hdt. 2. 144) and Aeschylus (Suppl. 560), Typhon is identified with the Egyptian Seth, and Pindar in a prosidion (fr. 91) told the story of the metamorphosis of the gods into different animals in their haste to escape from him, plainly an Egyptian motif (J. Gwyn Griffiths, Hermes 88, 1960, pp. 374–6).¹

p. 381

It has been held that T. is by origin a wind-god. (see especially F. Worms, Hermes, 81, 1953, pp. 29-44.) The ancients certainly associated him with the words τῡφώς, τῡφῶν (cf. 306 n.). But it is far from certain that there is any real etymological connection... His association with the tornado is secondary, and due to popular etymology. It may have already influenced Hesiod, for there is a present no better explanation of the fact that irregular stormwinds (especially those met at sea) are made the children of [Typhon] 869 ff.). Cf. also on 307 and 846.

...

2. The Typhoeus episode is a doublet ... Yet the Hurrian myth of Ullikummi shows that such an episode is not out of place here (Dornseiff, p. 65);

p. 391

853, Goettling thought that this line implied a story like that in Apollodorus, where Typhon temporarily has the best of the fight, cuts the sinews of Zeus' hands and feet, and carries him off to Cilicia and the Corycian cave. ... This myth closely resembles [cont.]

p. 392

the Hittite myth of the battle between the Weather-god and the dragon Illuyanka, ... Illuyanka overcame the Weather-god, and took away his hear and eyes; but his son, who was married to Illuyanka's daughter, succeeded in getting them back. When the Weather-god's frame had been restored to its former state, he engaged Illuyanka in battle and killed him.

West 1997 [in folder][edit]

p. 67

The poem still known (as in antiquity) by its incipit Enũma eliš, 'When on high', or alterantively as the Epic of Creation, is a substantial composition of the Middle Babylonian period: 1,092 verses in seven [cont.]

p. 68

tablets, almost completely preserved.²⁰ Its narrative starts from the beginning of the world, but its main theme is the confliuct between the chief god of Babylon, Marduk (replaced by Aššur in an Assyrian recension), and the personified Sea, Tiamat. He defeats her and her monstrous supporters, ...

p. 277

But the motif that the present ruler of the gods came to power by defeating or disabling an older one, and that this was not the first critical event, seems specifically Near Eastern.

p. 280

7. In the Hittite text Earth gives birth in the subterranean Apsu to two children, who we infer, will pose threat to Teššub. According to Hesiod's poem, Earth in unison with Tartarus gives birth to Typhoeus, who poses a threat to Zeus. Presumably Teššub successfully demolished his adversaries, as Zeus did his.

...

Enũma eliš

The Babylonian poem begins with no preamble ... Apsu and Tiamat, the sweet subterranean water and the sea, were mingled as one. Then gods were born inside them: ...

p. 281

Anu gives his young grandson [Marduk] the four winds to play with. ... Marduk does offer [to oppose Tiamet], demanding the supreme power as his fee.

Marduk arms himself with a bow, a mce, lightning, a net, and his four winds.

p. 282

[Marduk] must, like Zeus, encounter and defeat in battle a huge and terrifying opponent before establishing his rule. Again like Zeus he uses fierce winds and lightning bolts as his weapons in fight.

5. Following this victory, both Marduk and Zeus are acclaimed by the gods as their king.

p. 301

The Sumerian poem Lugal-e⁶⁸ tells of Ninurta'a defeat of the terrible Azag, The salient points are that the Azag is born of Earth and Heaven (26); it grows mighty, and aspires to Ninurta's kingship (34-6, 48-56); Ninurta is portrayed as a storm-god whose weapons include tempestuous winds and flood (8 f., 76-95, 229, 235, 283, 288-301). There are other details that recall Hesiod: the Azag hisses like a serpent (175, cf. Th. 835), and both combatants set the landscape on fire (86, 178-80); cf. Th. 844-7, 859-67).

The Akkadian Anzu epic has a similar theme [as Lugal-e Ninurta vs. Asag epic] Ninurta (or Ningirsu) is again the hero. His opponent Anzu is a monstrous bird, who causes whirlwinds by flapping his great wings. Earth and floodwaters bring him to birth in a distant mountain. Enil appoints him doorkeeper of his palace, but while bathing, Anzu seizes the opportunity to make off with the Tablet of Destinies and thus royal power. Ninurta fights him with storm weapons (II 30-4): ...

Anzu roars like a lion (II 38), which is also one of Typhoeus' accomplishments (833). Ninurta eventually kills him with an arrow on his mountain, with which the creature is somehow identified; their is a reference to Ninurta's slaying the mountains and flaying them even as he floods them (III 17 f., 36), his overpowering rainstorm being evidently imagined as a lash that flays the ground beneath. This is precisely reproduced in Homer's lines about Typhoeus, where it is explicit that Zeus' victory over Typhoeus is a recurrent natural phenomenon:

p. 302

Anzu appears to have been a influential model for Enūma eliš. Marduk's conflict with Tiamat is narrated with the use of motifs that echo Ninurta's conflict with Anzu. He equips himself with fierce winds for the combat, and they play a decisive part in his victory. It is interesting that in listing Marduk's winds the poet distinguishes between the regular four (South Wind, North Wind, East Wind, West Wind), which are a gift of Anu, and a fourth group of wild, irregular winds that the god creates for himself. Hesiod makes a similar disticntion, except that he makes the wild winds emanate from Typhoeus, as oppossed to the good ones, Notos, Boreas, and Zephyros, which are of devine birth.⁷¹

p. 303

Typhoeus' name—with its variants Typhaon and later Typhon or Typhos–has sometimes been connected with the Ugaritic Spn, Phoenician Sapōn. This was the name of Baal's holy mountain, identified as the Djebel el Aqra to the north of Ugarit, the classical Mt. Kasios. There is evidence that it was itself devine, and its proprietor had a distinct identity as Ba'al Sapōn. He appers in n Ugaritic god-list, with Akkadian equivalent 'Storm-god of Mount Hazzi' In a treaty of Esarhaddon Baal-Sapunu is one of the three Baals who are adjured to send tempests upon the ships of Tyre if the treaty is violated.⁷⁷ Here, then, we have a divinity with a name which might indeed have become "Typhon" in Greek (though the older forms are harder to derive from it), and with a power similar to that of the Hesiodic figure, that of causing storms at sea. The obvious objection ...

p. 304

Hecataeus identified him [Typhon] with the Egyptian Seth, and the Egyptian motif of the gods' metamorphosis into different animals in their haste to escape from him was incorporated by Pindar in a narrative which probably combined his birth in the Corycian cave with his final pinning under Etna.

Vases[edit]

LIMC Typhon 14

Ogden 2013a, p. 69

Gantz, p. 50

^ Ogden 2013a, p. 69; Gantz, p. 50; LIMC Typhon 14.

[1] Ogden 2013a, p. 69; Gantz, p. 50; LIMC Typhon 14.

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