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Zeus hurling his lightning at Typhon, Chalcidian black-figured hydria, ca. 550 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 596)

Typhon ( /ˈtaɪfən/; Ancient Greek: Τυφῶν, Tuphōn, [typʰɔ̂ːn]), also Typhoeus (Τυφωεύς, Tuphōeus), Typhaon (Τυφάων, Tuphaōn) or Typhos (Τυφώς, Tuphōs) was the last son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus, and the most deadly monster of Greek mythology. He was known as the "Father of all monsters"; his wife Echidna was likewise the "Mother of All Monsters."

Typhon was described in pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, as the largest and most fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands reached east and west and, instead of a human head, he had a hundred dragon heads; some however depict him as having a human head and the dragon heads being attached to his hands instead of fingers. He was feared even by the mighty gods. His bottom half was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings, and fire flashed from his eyes.

Typhon attempts to destroy Zeus at the will of Gaia, because Zeus had imprisoned the Titans. Typhon initially overcame Zeus in their first battle, and tore out Zeus' sinews. However, Hermes recovered the sinews and restored them to Zeus. Typhon was finally defeated by Zeus, who trapped him underneath Mount Etna.

Accounts[link]

Hesiod narrates Typhon's birth in this poem:

But when Zeus had driven the Titans from Olympus,

mother Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of

Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite.

—Hesiod, Theogony 820–822.

In the alternative account of the origin of Typhon (Typhoeus), the Homeric Hymn to Apollo makes the monster Typhaon at Delphi a son of archaic Hera in her Minoan form, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus or Mars, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia and confined there in the enigmatic Arima, or land of the Arimoi, en Arimois (Iliad, ii. 781–783). It was in Cilicia that Zeus battled with the ancient monster and overcame him, in a more complicated story: It was not an easy battle, and Typhon temporarily overcame Zeus, cut the "sinews" from him and left him in the "leather sack", the korukos that is the etymological origin of the korukion andron, the Korykian or Corycian Cave in which Zeus suffers temporary eclipse as if in the Land of the Dead. The region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia had many opportunities for coastal Hellenes' connection with the Hittites to the north. From its first reappearance, the Hittite myth of Illuyankas has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon.^[1] Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins each note the close agreements. Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press) 1995, reconstructs in disciplined detail the flexible Indo-European poetic formula that underlies myth, epic and magical charm texts of the lashing and binding of Typhon.

Typhon was known to be a large humanoid beast. Typhon was the last child of Gaia. After the defeat of his brothers, the Gigantes, Gaia urged him to avenge them, as well as his other brothers, the Titans.

Offspring[link]

Typhon fathered several children by his niece, Echidna, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto:

• Orthrus, a fearsome two-headed hound. Theogony, 306ff.^[2] Orthrus, and his master, Eurytion, son of Ares and the Hesperid Erytheia, guarded the fabulous red cattle of Geryon. Both were slain, along with Geryon, when Heracles stole the red cattle.

• The Sphinx was sent by Hera to plague the city of Thebes. She was the most brilliant of Typhon's children, and would slay anyone who could not answer her riddles (possibly by strangling them). When Oedipus finally answered her riddle, she threw herself into the ocean in a fit of fury and drowned.

• The Nemean Lion was a gigantic lion with impenetrable skin. Selene, the moon goddess, adored the beast. Heracles was commanded to slay the Lion as the first of his Twelve Labors. First, he attempted to shoot arrows at it, then he used his great club, and was eventually forced to strangle the beast. He would then use the Lion's own claws to skin it, whereupon he wore its invulnerable hide as armor.

• Cerberus, another one of Typhon's sons was a three-headed dog that was employed by Hades as the guardian of the passage way to and from the Underworld. According to Hesiod, he was the son of Orthrus and Echidna.

• Ladon was a serpentine dragon, known as a drakon. According to Hesiod, Ladon was the son of Phorcys and Ceto, instead of Typhon and Echidna. Regardless of his parentage, Ladon entwined himself around the tree in the Garden of the Hesperides at the behest of Hera, who appointed him the garden's guardian. He was eventually killed by Heracles.

• The Lernaean Hydra, another one of Typhon's daughters, terrorized a spring at the lake of Lerna, near Argos, slaying anyone and anything that approached her lair with her noxious venom, save for a monstrous crab that was her companion. She was originally thought to have nine heads, and any neck, if severed,would give rise to two more heads, her ninth head was immortal. She and her crab were slain by Heracles as the second of his Twelve Labors - he cut off her heads and burnt the neck so that she could not regenerate,and crushed her ninth head under a rock, (the crab being accidentally crushed underneath Heracles' heel).

• Typhon's last child was his daughter, Chimera. Chimera resembled a tremendous, fire-breathing lioness with a goat's head emerging from the middle of her back, and had a snake for a tail. She roamed the ancient kingdom of Lycia, particularly around Mount Chimaera (possibly near Yanartaş), bringing bad omens and destruction in her wake, until she was slain by Bellerophon and Pegasus at the behest of Iobates.

Battle with Zeus[link]

Typhon started destroying cities and hurling mountains in a fit of rage. All of the gods of Olympus fled to their home. Only Zeus stood firm, and the battle raged, ending when Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon, trapping him.

The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods is described in detail by Hesiod^[3] as a vast grisly monster with a hundred serpent heads "with dark flickering tongues" flashing fire from their eyes and a din of voices and a hundred serpents legs, a feature shared by many primal monsters of Greek myth that extend in serpentine or scaly coils from the waist down. The titanic struggle created earthquakes and tsunami.^[4] Once conquered by Zeus' thunderbolts, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, the common destiny of many such archaic adversaries, or he was confined beneath Mount Aetna (Pindar, Pythian Ode 1.19–20; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 370), where "his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it", or in other volcanic regions, where he is the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces, as Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan) is their "civilized" Olympian manifestation.

Typhon is also the father of hot dangerous storm winds which issue forth from the stormy pit of Tartarus, according to Hesiod. Likewise, the rumblings of Typhon emitted from deepest Tartarus could be clearly heard within the underground torrent near Seleuceia, now in Turkey, until his presence was neutralized by the building of a Byzantine church nearby.^[5]

Origin of name[link]

Typhon may be derived from the Greek τύφειν (typhein), to smoke, hence it is considered to be a possible etymology for the word typhoon, supposedly borrowed by the Persians (as طوفان Tufân) and Arabs to describe the cyclonic storms of the Indian Ocean.^{[citation needed]} The Greeks also frequently represented him as a storm-demon, especially in the version where he stole Zeus's thunderbolts and wrecked the earth with storms (cf. Hesiod, Theogony; Nonnus, Dionysiaca).^{[citation needed]}

Related concepts and myths[link]

Since Herodotus, Typhon has been identified by some scholars with the Egyptian Set. In the Orphic tradition, Typhon leads the Titans when they attack and kill Dionysus, just as Set is responsible for the murder of Osiris. Furthermore, the slaying of Typhon by Zeus bears similarities to the killing of Vritra by Indra^[6] (a deity also associated with lightning and storms), and possibly the two stories are ultimately derived from a common Indo-European source.^{[citation needed]} Similarities can be found in the battle between Thor and Jormungand from Norse myths, as well as (perhaps) an incident in the Irish Metrical Dindsenchas in which the Dagda fights a giant octopus.^[7] Mythologist Joseph Campbell also makes parallels to the slaying of Leviathan by YHWH, about which YHWH boasts to Job.^[8]

Comparisons can also be drawn with the Mesopotamian monster Tiamat and its slaying by Babylonian chief god Marduk. The similarities between the Greek myth and its earlier Mesopotamian counterpart do not seem to be merely accidental. A number of west Semitic (Ras Shamra) and Hittite sources appear to corroborate the theory of a genetic relationship between the two myths.^[9]

Popular culture[link]

• Typhon was referenced in Dante Alighieri's Inferno. He is mentioned to be among the biblical and mythological giants that are frozen onto the rings outside of Hell's Circle of Treachery. Dante and Virgil threatened to go to Tityos and Typhon if Antaeus doesn't lower them into the Circle of Treachery.
• Typhon was featured in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys portrayed by Glenn Shadix. He is portrayed as a giant who was trapped in a rock by Hera so that she can use Echidna's children in her plots. Hercules managed to free Typhon and reunite him with Echidna.
• Typhon appeared in "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan. He exploded out of the mountain and mortals thought he was a freak storm. Eventually he was subdued, with the help of Poseidon and an army of Cyclopes. He was captured before he had the chance to make it to Olympus, saving the gods from destruction.
• Typhon is the final boss in the hack-and-slash game Titan Quest.
• Typhon is one of the gods or superhumans in Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness, where he appears with and is related to various Egyptian deities.
• Typhon is the final boss in the greek levels in the game Age of Empires: Mythologies for the Nintendo DS
• Typhon appeared in Hercules: The Animated Series, where he was voiced by Regis Philbin. He is freed of his imprisonment in the midst of a battle between Hercules and Echidna during Titan Smashing Day, a holiday commemorating his defeat by Zeus. It is revealed Zeus had Hera's help in the battle and it is Hera's intervention once again that leads the two monsters to retreat.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985
• Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, (1955) 1960, §36.1–3
• Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks 1951
• Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon 1995, 448–459

External links[link]

• Typhoeus at Theoi compiled sources of myth in classical literature
• [1]

Richard Sidney Anthony (1875–1962) was an Irish politician. A Linotype operator by profession, Anthony stood unsuccessfully for election at the 1923 general election. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann as an Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Cork Borough constituency at the June 1927 general election.^[1] He was re-elected as a Labour Party TD at the September 1927 general election. He left the Labour Party and was elected as an independent TD at the 1932 general election. He was re-elected as an independent TD at the 1933 and 1937 general elections.^[2]

He lost his seat at the 1938 general election but was re-elected at the 1943 and 1944 general elections. He again lost his Dáil seat at the 1948 general election but was elected to the 6th Seanad on the Labour Panel at the subsequent Seanad election in 1948. He stood at the 1951 general election but was not elected. He did not contest the 1951 Seanad election but was elected to the 8th Seanad in 1954, again on the Labour Panel. He did not contest the 1957 Seanad election and retired from politics. He served as Lord Mayor of Cork from 1942–43.

References[link]

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