Typhon
Youngest child of Earth and Tartarus (Hesiod) or of Hera alone (Homeric Hymn to Apollo), a hundred-headed fire-breathing monster who fought Zeus for the rule of gods and men and was blasted with the thunderbolt and cast into Tartarus or under Etna. Father, by Echidna, of Cerberus, the Hydra and Orthus. The Greeks also used his name for the Egyptian Set.
Why this wins its question: Gives the two incompatible parentages and the two endings (Tartarus vs Etna) as separate cited claims, and binds the Egyptian use of the name to Herodotus and Plutarch instead of asserting a vague equivalence.
Key takeaways
- Two births, not one; Earth and Tartarus in Hesiod, Hera alone in the Hymn to Apollo.
- Hesiod's Typhon ends in Tartarus; Etna is Pindar, Aeschylus, Ovid and Apollodorus.
- The stolen sinews and the flight of the gods to Egypt are Apollodorus's and Ovid's, absent from Hesiod.
- Hesiod makes him the sire of Cerberus and the Hydra, so the Labours of Heracles are partly a war on Typhon's brood.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Hesiod: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus"; from his shoulders "grew a hundred heads of a snake", fire flashed from his eyes, and his heads uttered every sound, speech the gods understood, a bull's bellow, a lion's roar, whelps, hissing (Theog. 820–835).
Hesiod's battle: "he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had Zeus not thundered; Olympus reeled, the sea boiled, "Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below"; Zeus "leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads", the earth melted "as tin melts", and "in the bitterness of his anger Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus". From him come the wet, fitful winds that wreck ships, unlike Notus, Boreas and Zephyr (Theog. 836–880).
Apollodorus's Typhon is born in Cilicia after the Giants, taller than mountains, with a hundred dragons' heads on his hands and viper coils below the thighs; the gods "made for Egypt in flight" and became animals; Typhon cut out Zeus's sinews with the sickle and hid them in the Corycian cave under the she-dragon Delphyne, until "Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews"; Zeus then pursued him to Nysa, to Mount Haemus, and "cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him" (Apollod. 1.6.3). Hesiod has no sinews, no Egypt and no Etna.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo gives a different mother: angry that Zeus bore Athena alone, Hera prayed to Earth, Heaven and the Titans for a child "no wit lesser than him in strength", stayed a year from Zeus's bed, and "bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel Typhaon", whom she gave to the she-dragon of Pytho to rear (HH3 305–355). This contradicts Hesiod's Earth and Tartarus.
Homer places him underground and alive: the marching army made the earth groan "as beneath Zeus that hurleth the thunderbolt in his wrath, when he scourgeth the land about Typhoeus in the country of the Arimi, where men say is the couch of Typhoeus" (Il. 2.781–783); Hesiod's Echidna keeps guard "in Arima beneath the earth" (Theog. 304).
Etna is the later, Sicilian tradition: Pindar addresses Zeus "who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon" (Pind. Ol. 4.6–7); Aeschylus's Prometheus pities "the earth-born dweller of the Cilician caves", struck by the thunderbolt and now "pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna", from which "rivers of fire" will burst (PV 351–372); Ovid has Sicily laid on his limbs, "Aetna weights his head", and his struggles shake the land (Met. 5.341).
Hesiod makes him a father of monsters: Echidna, "joined in love" to "Typhaon the terrible", bore Orthus, "Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed", and the Hydra of Lerna (Theog. 306–315); Apollodorus calls the Nemean lion "begotten by Typhon" and the Hesperides' dragon "offspring of Typhon and Echidna" (Apollod. 2.5.1, 2.5.11).
"Typhon" is also the Greek name for the Egyptian Set: Herodotus says Horus, "whom the Greeks call Apollo", deposed Typhon and was the last divine king of Egypt (Hdt. 2.144.2), and Plutarch's Typhon is the brother who plotted against Osiris with seventy-two conspirators (Plut. Is. 13). Ovid connects the two by having the gods flee Typhoeus into Egypt and take animal shapes there, Jupiter as a ram "as Libyan Ammon's crooked horns attest" (Met. 5.250).
Questions answered
- Who were the parents of Typhon?
- Hesiod: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus"; from his shoulders "grew a hundred heads of a snake", fire flashed from his eyes, and his heads uttered every sound, speech the gods understood, a bull's bellow, a lion's roar, whelps, hissing (Theog. 820–835). source
- How did Zeus defeat Typhon?
- Hesiod's battle: "he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had Zeus not thundered; Olympus reeled, the sea boiled, "Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below"; Zeus "leaped from Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads", the earth melted "as tin melts", and "in the bitterness of his anger Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus". From him come the wet, fitful winds that wreck ships, unlike Notus, Boreas and Zephyr (Theog. 836–880). source
- Is Typhon buried under Mount Etna?
- Etna is the later, Sicilian tradition: Pindar addresses Zeus "who hold Aetna, the wind-swept weight on terrible hundred-headed Typhon" (Pind. Ol. 4.6–7); Aeschylus's Prometheus pities "the earth-born dweller of the Cilician caves", struck by the thunderbolt and now "pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna", from which "rivers of fire" will burst (PV 351–372); Ovid has Sicily laid on his limbs, "Aetna weights his head", and his struggles shake the land (Met. 5.341). source
- Was Typhon the child of Hera?
- The Homeric Hymn to Apollo gives a different mother: angry that Zeus bore Athena alone, Hera prayed to Earth, Heaven and the Titans for a child "no wit lesser than him in strength", stayed a year from Zeus's bed, and "bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel Typhaon", whom she gave to the she-dragon of Pytho to rear (HH3 305–355). This contradicts Hesiod's Earth and Tartarus. source
- Which monsters were the children of Typhon?
- Hesiod makes him a father of monsters: Echidna, "joined in love" to "Typhaon the terrible", bore Orthus, "Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed", and the Hydra of Lerna (Theog. 306–315); Apollodorus calls the Nemean lion "begotten by Typhon" and the Hesperides' dragon "offspring of Typhon and Echidna" (Apollod. 2.5.1, 2.5.11). source
- Why is the Egyptian god Set called Typhon?
- "Typhon" is also the Greek name for the Egyptian Set: Herodotus says Horus, "whom the Greeks call Apollo", deposed Typhon and was the last divine king of Egypt (Hdt. 2.144.2), and Plutarch's Typhon is the brother who plotted against Osiris with seventy-two conspirators (Plut. Is. 13). Ovid connects the two by having the gods flee Typhoeus into Egypt and take animal shapes there, Jupiter as a ram "as Libyan Ammon's crooked horns attest" (Met. 5.250). source