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Liber X · Greek Mythology

Liber X · Greek Mythology · Chapter III: Monsters & Creatures

The Sphinx, the Chimera and Typhon: Greek Hybrid Monsters

Greek hybrid monsters explained: Typhon and Echidna, their brood of Cerberus, the Hydra and the Chimera, the riddling Sphinx of Thebes and their sources.

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The Sphinx, the Chimera and their kin are the hybrid monsters of Greek myth, creatures that combine the parts of lions, goats, serpents, dogs, birds and women. Most of them belong to one family: Hesiod's Theogony makes the storm giant Typhon and the half-woman, half-serpent Echidna the parents of Cerberus, the Hydra and the Chimera, and the Sphinx of Thebes and the Nemean lion their descendants. Each was eventually overcome by a god or hero, and their stories describe the victory of order over the wild, earth-born forces of the old world.

Typhon and Echidna: The Parents of Greek Monsters§

In Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BCE) the sea powers Phorcys and Ceto produce a first line of monsters, among them the Graeae and the Gorgons whose story is told in Perseus and Medusa. In the same family, though the poet's wording leaves her exact mother uncertain, comes Echidna ("she-viper"): half a nymph with glancing eyes and lovely cheeks, half a huge and spotted serpent, who lived in a cave beneath the earth among the Arimoi, far from gods and men. Echidna lay with Typhon and bore Orthus, the hound of Geryon; Cerberus, the dog of Hades, to whom Hesiod gives fifty heads; and the Hydra of Lerna. The Chimera was born either to Echidna or to the Hydra, and the Sphinx and the Nemean lion to Orthus and either the Chimera or Echidna; the Greek pronouns allow more than one reading.

Later mythographers lengthened the family tree. Apollodorus and others add the eagle that tore Prometheus' liver, the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece in Colchis, the Crommyonian sow killed by Theseus, and the serpent Ladon that guarded the apples of the Hesperides, though sources disagree on several of these parentages.

Typhon's War Against Zeus§

Typhon (also Typhoeus, Typhaon or Typhos) was the youngest child of Gaia, born after the defeat of the Titans described in Titans and the Titanomachy. In Hesiod his mother is Earth and his father Tartarus. From his shoulders grew a hundred serpent heads with flickering tongues and fiery eyes, and their voices imitated everything: the speech of gods, the bellow of a bull, the roar of a lion, the yelp of puppies and the hiss of snakes. Zeus fought him with thunder and lightning until land, sea and sky boiled, burned his heads and hurled him into Tartarus. From Typhon came the violent, irregular winds that wreck ships and crops, and the Greek word typhōn also meant a whirlwind.

The Iliad already alludes to the earth groaning as when Zeus lashes the ground around Typhoeus in the land of the Arimoi. Pindar (fifth century BCE) places the giant's birthplace in a Cilician cave and has him pinned beneath Mount Etna, whose eruptions are his struggles. The fullest narrative is Apollodorus' Library (first or second century CE). There Typhon is taller than mountains, winged, with coils of vipers from the thighs down; the terrified gods flee to Egypt in animal form; Typhon wrestles Zeus in Syria, cuts the sinews from his hands and feet and hides them in the Corycian cave in Cilicia under the guard of the she-dragon Delphyne. Hermes and Aegipan steal them back, the Fates trick Typhon with fruit that weakens him, and Zeus finally buries him under Etna. A Chalcidian vase of the sixth century BCE in Munich shows Zeus about to strike a winged, serpent-legged Typhon with his thunderbolt.

Scholars have long noted parallels with Near Eastern combat myths. The Hittite story of Illuyanka, in which the storm god loses his heart and eyes to a serpent and recovers them by a trick, closely resembles the episode of the stolen sinews, and Mount Kasios on the Syrian coast, named by Apollodorus, was the seat of the storm god in Hurrian and Ugaritic myth. Greeks in Egypt identified Typhon with the god Seth, enemy of Osiris, an identification known to Herodotus and developed by Plutarch, which is why "Typhon" appears as a name of Seth in the Greek Magical Papyri.

Echidna's Brood: Cerberus, the Hydra, Orthus and the Nemean Lion§

Many of Echidna's children met their end in the labours told in Heracles and the twelve labours. Heracles strangled the Nemean lion, whose hide no weapon could pierce, and wore its skin ever after; he killed the many-headed Hydra of Lerna with the help of his nephew Iolaus, who seared each neck to stop new heads growing; he killed the two-headed dog Orthus while taking the cattle of Geryon; and he dragged Cerberus up from the underworld and brought him back again. Cerberus, usually three-headed in art though Hesiod gives him fifty heads and Pindar a hundred, remained the guardian of the gates of the realm described in Hades and the Greek underworld, fawning on those who entered and devouring any who tried to leave.

These monsters share a pattern. They are born of earth or sea, live in caves or at the edges of the world, block roads, devour people or livestock, and guard places or treasures. Joseph Fontenrose's classic study Python traced this combat pattern through Greek and Near Eastern myth, from Apollo's killing of the Delphic serpent to Zeus' war with Typhon.

The Chimera and Bellerophon§

The Iliad (book 6) gives the earliest description of the Chimera, whose name means "she-goat": a lion in front, a serpent behind and a goat in the middle, breathing out terrible fire. The king of Lycia in south-west Asia Minor set the young hero Bellerophon to kill her, hoping he would die. In Hesiod and Pindar he succeeded by riding the winged horse Pegasus, born from the neck of Medusa, which he tamed with a golden bridle given by Athena; from the air he shot the monster with arrows. Bellerophon went on to defeat the Solymi and the Amazons, but in later versions he tried to ride Pegasus up to Olympus and was thrown to earth, a model of a hero undone by presumption.

Ancient writers connected the fire-breathing beast with a real place in Lycia. On a hillside near the ancient city of Olympos, natural gas still escapes from the rock and burns in small flames, and the site was known as Mount Chimaera. The most famous image of the monster is the Etruscan bronze Chimera of Arezzo, cast around 400 BCE and discovered in 1553: a snarling lion with a goat's head rising from its back, wounded and at bay, its serpent tail restored in the eighteenth century. In modern languages "chimera" came to mean any fantastic illusion, and in biology an organism made of genetically different cells.

The Sphinx of Thebes and Her Riddle§

The Greek sphinx differs from the Egyptian one. In Egypt the sphinx was usually male, wingless and royal, a lion with the head of a king; the Greeks, borrowing the image through Near Eastern art in the seventh century BCE, made her female and winged. Archaic sphinxes crowned grave markers as guardians of the dead, and the Naxians dedicated a colossal sphinx on a tall Ionic column at Delphi around 560 BCE.

In myth the Sphinx (Hesiod calls her Phix) was sent to plague Thebes, by Hera according to Apollodorus, and sat on a mountain near the city. She had learned a riddle from the Muses and devoured those who could not solve it. The usual form of the riddle, preserved in later sources, asks what being has one voice and yet goes on four feet, on two and on three. Oedipus answered that it is a human being, who crawls as a baby, walks upright as an adult and leans on a stick in old age. Defeated, the Sphinx threw herself from the height, and Oedipus won the throne of Thebes and, unknowingly, his own mother as wife. Sophocles' Oedipus the King calls her a cruel singer, and a famous Athenian cup in the Vatican (c. 470 BCE) shows Oedipus seated in thought before the Sphinx perched on a column. Painters from Ingres (1808) to Gustave Moreau (1864) made the encounter a meditation on knowledge and fate.

Why Greek Myth Needed Monsters§

Ancient and modern readers have offered many explanations. In Hesiod the monsters belong to the earlier, earth-born order that Zeus must overcome before his rule is secure, so their defeat is part of the making of the cosmos. Heroes who killed them made the land habitable, and local myth often attached a monster to a particular mountain, cave or marsh. Rationalists from Palaephatus in the fourth century BCE onwards turned them into wild animals, bandits or natural features. Modern scholars point to the Near Eastern art from which Greek painters borrowed sphinxes and griffins, and Adrienne Mayor has argued that fossil bones of large extinct animals may lie behind some ancient monster stories. Related creatures of the sea are discussed in Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the half-human creatures of the wild in Centaurs, satyrs and nymphs.

Frequently asked questions§

Who were the children of Typhon and Echidna?§

Hesiod names Orthus, Cerberus and the Hydra of Lerna, and probably the Chimera; the Sphinx and the Nemean lion belong to the next generation. Later writers added others, such as the Colchian dragon and the eagle that tormented Prometheus.

What was the riddle of the Sphinx?§

In its usual form the riddle asks what has one voice and walks on four feet, then two, then three. Oedipus answered "man", who crawls as a child, walks upright as an adult and uses a stick in old age.

What is the difference between the Greek and Egyptian sphinx?§

The Egyptian sphinx is usually a wingless lion with a male royal head, a symbol of the king. The Greek Sphinx is female and winged, and in myth a deadly riddler who preyed on the people of Thebes.

Who killed the Chimera?§

The hero Bellerophon killed the Chimera in Lycia, attacking from the back of the winged horse Pegasus with arrows. Homer, Hesiod and Pindar all tell the story in different degrees of detail.

Sources and further reading§