Typhon, also spelled Typhaon or Typhoeus, in Greek mythology, was the youngest son of Gaia (Earth) and Tartarus (of the underworld). Enormous, poisonous, fire-breathing, and as evil as they come, Typhon is the most feared monster in all of Greek mythology. Shortly after his birth, he challenged Zeus for the right to rule over all the gods.
Who was Typhon?
He was a monstrous storm giant who besieged the sky but was defeated by Zeus and imprisoned in the pit of Tartarus. He was the source of devastating storms that arose from that dark underworld. Later poets described him as a giant volcano, trapped under the weight of Mount Aitna (Etna) in Sicily. In this guise, he was identified with the giant Enceladus.
Typhon was a winged giant, said to be so large that his head touched the stars. He was shaped like a man from the waist up with two coiled snakes instead of legs. He had a hundred serpent heads for fingers, a dirty, matted beard, pointed ears, and bright eyes.
According to some, he had two hundred hands consisting of fifty fingers with snake heads on each hand and one hundred heads proper, one human and the other ninety-nine beastly (of bulls, boars, snakes, lions, and leopards). While a volcano-demon typhoon threw red-hot rocks into the sky and fire boiled from his mouth
Birth
Many legends surround the birth of Typhon. Some legends say that Gaia, the primordial goddess of the earth, became angry when Zeus destroyed her children, the giants. She decided she would have another child, a giant of giants, to replace the children she had lost, but since Zeus had also defeated her husband, the Titan Cronus, she needed a new lover. She turned to Tartarus, “the pit,” and with the help of Aphrodite, they were able to have a child: Typhon.
Other legends say that Hera flew into a rage after discovering another of Zeus’ love children. She declared that she would have a child without Zeus, since he had so many children without her, and that the child would be even more powerful than Zeus himself. Some legends say that Gaia heard her crying and sympathized with her, so she made Hera pregnant with Typhon. Other legends say that Hera went to Cronus and gave him two stones covered in his own semen. Hera buried them, and after many months, one grew into Typhon.
Children of Typhon
Typhon took Echidna, a monstrous snake-woman who lived in a cave and devoured men who passed by, as his wife. Of course, Echidna didn’t have much luck devouring Typhon, so she accepted him as her mate and gave birth to many “fierce offspring,” including the Lernaean Hydra, the Chimera, the Sphinx, Cerberus, the Gorgons, and Scylla. Together, Typhon and Echidna became “the father and mother of all monsters.”
Origin
He was first mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, which was written around the 8th century BC, but he was not fully developed until Hesiod wrote his Theogony in the 7th century. From then on, countless Greek and Roman poets faced this great monster; Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, Nonnus, and Seneca contributed to his legend.
But Typhon may have had an even greater ancestor. The Greeks themselves pointed out that there was a connection between this monster and the Egyptian god Set, who also unleashed terrible battles when he tried to take control of the supreme god.
Appearance of Typhon
All the ancient Greek poets painted a different picture of Typhon, and with good reason. The only details they can agree on are that he was immeasurably large, “so big that he rose above all the mountains, and his head often grazed the stars,” and unimaginably hideous, worse than your worst nightmare. Being immeasurable and unimaginable, he was not an easy monster to describe!
Among other horrors, Typhon has been given: a hundred serpent heads with eyes that shoot fire; the heads of a leopard, lion, bull, boar, bear, dragon, and wolf; spirals of serpent tails below the waist; hundreds of arms and hands, with snakes instead of fingers; hundreds of wings sprouting all over his body; and a pair of enormous dragon wings.
Over time, Greek artists merged and edited all these poetic descriptions until they reached a conventional appearance for Typhon. From the waist up, he was a wild giant with bulging muscles, a long, dirty beard, and hairy hair. His nose grew like a dog’s snout, his ears were pointed like a donkey’s, and his eyes flashed fire.
Although he was usually depicted with only two of his hundreds of arms, his fingers were kept artificially long, suggesting snakes. A pair of feathered wings spread out from his enormous shoulders. Below the waist, Typhon had two serpent tails instead of legs. His tails were usually drawn with vibrant red spots and a twisted, tangled appearance.
Personality
Greek poets described him as “terrible, scandalous, and unlawful,” “fallen and cruel,” “strong and tireless,” and “the greatest plague to men and gods.” He was undoubtedly the greatest bully in Greek mythology, and there was not a single kind or merciful bone in his body.
For him, destruction was a game and deformity was beautiful. He reduced villages to rubble for no reason, slaughtered men, and attacked the gods for the sake of it. He was attracted to dark places and monstrous characters, such as his wife, Echidna, but even the places and people he liked could not win his loyalty. He spent his life on a lonely path of destruction.
Special abilities
With so many monstrous parts on a single body, he was never short of ways to attack. He could use his heads or snake fingers to spit deadly poison at you. His dragon heads or his own terrible eyes could rain fire down on you.
Meanwhile, his other heads, from leopard to boar, would stun you with “his war cry, the cries of all the wild beasts together,” which was so loud that it echoed through the mountains and set boulders rolling. He was so large that his footsteps caused earthquakes. His voice was fiercer than thunder. He could use his powerful arms to break mountains and hurl molten rocks at the villages below.
Typhon’s confrontation with Zeus
The prize is nothing less than the Olympian throne; he revealed the full extent of his abilities: “from the monster’s flame, from his lightning bolts and from the burn and breath of his storm winds, the whole ground and sky and sea boiled, and gigantic waves tossed and beat up and down, a great shaking of the earth took place.”
Eventually, Zeus gained the upper hand, but even in death, Typhon was deadly: “Typhon crashed down, was paralyzed, and the gigantic earth groaned beneath him, and the flame of the great lord was extinguished throughout the dark and rugged forests of the mountains, and much of the gigantic earth was burned by the wonderful wind of his heat and melted.”
When Zeus saw that he had won, he threw Typhon into an endless pit called Tartarus. Even so, volcanic eruptions and winds that swept hundreds of miles of withered flowers and crashing ships came from that pit where Typhon lay for hundreds of years.
Modern appearances
During Greek times, Typhon was connected to all kinds of natural disasters, from droughts to tsunamis, forest fires, and volcanic eruptions. Appropriately, his name lives on in today’s culture as a feared natural disaster: the typhoon. He has also appeared in many modernized versions of Greek mythology, including in Clash of the Titans and Percy Jackson.
