Echidna was a half-woman, half-snake creature in Greek mythology. She is also known as the "mother of all monsters", as she gave birth to most of the Greek mythical creatures. She was the wife of Typhon, who was the "father of all monsters" and the most fearsome and dangerous monster in said mythology.
Description[]
Echidna was half beautiful maiden and half fearsome snake. Hesiod described "the goddess fierce Echidna" as a flesh eating "monster, irresistible", who was like neither "mortal men" nor "the undying gods", but was "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin", who "dies not nor grows old all her days."
Aristophanes (late 5th century BC), who makes her a denizen of the underworld, gives Echidna a hundred heads (presumably snake heads), matching the hundred snake heads Hesiod says her mate Typhon had.
History[]
Background[]
Not much else is known of Echidna other than that she is the serpentine daughter of Ceto and Phorcys, thus a descendant of Tiamat herself. Echidna was born in a cave and apparently lived alone (in that same cave, or perhaps another), as Hesiod describes it, "beneath the secret parts of the holy earth ... deep down under a hollow rock far from the deathless gods and mortal men", a place appointed by the gods, where she "keeps guard in Arima". It was perhaps from this same cave that Echidna used to "carry off passers-by".
After seeing Zeus kill and capture most of her children, Gaia mated with Tartarus and produced the mighty and terrible Typhon, whom was tasked of destroying the Olympian gods. But his first course of action was to mate with Echidna, and their union produced terrible monsters for future demigod heroes to fight. Echidna and Typhon bore many children, but none were was famous as they. The first was Orthrus, the two-headed dog that guarded the cattle of Greyon. Secondly was Cerberus, the three-headed hound who guarded the gates of the Underworld. The third was the Lernaean Hydra, the multi-headed serpent that grew two heads if one was cut off. And lastly the Chimera, a creature that had the heads of a lion, a goat, and a snake.
Death[]
Echidna did not participate in the conflict between Typhon and the Olympians, but nonetheless, Zeus managed to repel the Father of Monsters, and buried Typhon under Mount Etna. Echidna and her children, however, were spared to continue challenging future heroes. Echidna was later killed by Argos, the hundred-eyed giant, while sleeping and her corpse remained in her cave ever since.
