Echidna (mythology)

the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Echidna (mythology)' Start a new discussion about 'Echidna (mythology)' Answer questions from other users Full Discussion Forum

Recent Posts

Son of she viper follows whos rules?? reply quickly please

Who was the son of echidna

Encyclopedia

In the most ancient layers of Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Echidna (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: ???d?a, ekhis, ????, meaning "she viper") was called the "Mother of All Monsters". Echidna was described by Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
 as a female monster spawned in a cave, who mothered with her mate Typhoeus

Typhon

In Greek mythology, Typhon , also Typheus/Typhoeus , Typhaon or Typhos is the final son of Gaia , fathered by Tartarus, and is the god of wind....
 (or Typhon

Typhon

In Greek mythology, Typhon , also Typheus/Typhoeus , Typhaon or Typhos is the final son of Gaia , fathered by Tartarus, and is the god of wind....
) every major horrible monster in the Greek myths,

the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth. And there she has a cave deep down under a hollow rock far from the deathless gods and mortal men. There, then, did the gods appoint her a glorious house to dwell in: and she keeps guard in Arima beneath the earth, grim Echidna, a nymph who dies not nor grows old all her days. (Theogony

Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogy of the polytheism of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC....
, 295-305)

Usually considered an offspring of Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic Roman mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the Hades....
 and Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia Gaia is a Greek primordial gods and chthonic deity in the Ancient Greek Pantheon and considered a Mother Goddess or Great Goddess....
, or of Ceto

Ceto

In Greek mythology, Cetus , also called Ceto or Cetea, was a hideous sea monster, a daughter of Gaia and Pontus . The asteroid 65489 Ceto was named after her, and its satellite Ceto I Phorcys after her husband....
 and Phorcys

Phorcys

In Greek mythology, Phorcys, or Phorkys , was one of the names of the "Old Man [or One] of the Sea", the primeval Greek sea gods, who, according to Hesiod, was the son of Pontus and Gaia ....
 (according to Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
) or of Chrysaor

Chrysaor

In Greek mythology, Chrysaor , the brother of Pegasus, was often depicted as a young man, the son of Poseidon and Medusa . Chrysaor and his brother, the winged horse Pegasus, were not born until Perseus chopped off Medusa's head....
 and the naiad

Naiad

In Greek mythology, the Naiads or Naiades were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks.They are distinct from river gods, who embodied rivers, and the very ancient spirits that inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean Lerna in the Argolid....
 Callirhoe

Callirrhoe (naiad)

In Greek mythology, Callirrhoe was a naiads. She was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys . She had three husbands, Chrysaor, Neilus and Poseidon....
, or Peiras and Styx

Styx (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the "River Styx" was a river which formed the boundary between Earth and the Underworld . It circles Hades nine times. The rivers Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron and Cocytus all converge at the center of Hades on a great swamp....
 (according to Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
, who did not know who Peiras was aside from her father), her face and torso of a beautiful woman was depicted as winged in archaic vase-paintings, but always with the body of a serpent (see also Lamia

Lamia (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Lamia was a Queen of Libya who became a child-murdering daemon . In later writings she is pluralized into many lamiae ....
). She is also sometimes described as having two serpent's tails. Karl Kerenyi

Karl Kerényi

One of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology, K?roly Ker?nyi was born in Temesv?r, Hungary , and then lived in Hungary....
 noted an archaic vase-painting with a pair of echidnas performing sacred rites in a vineyard, while on the opposite side of the vessel, goats were attacking the vines: chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
 Echidna as protector of the vineyard perhaps.

The site of her cave, Arima, Homer

Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
 calls "the couch of Typhoeus" (Iliad, II.783). When she and her mate attacked the Olympians

Twelve Olympians

The Twelve Olympians or younger gods, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal Greek Godss of the Greek pantheon , residing atop Mount Olympus, having supplanted the Titan or older gods in the greek mythogical narrative....
, Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
 beat them back and punished Typhon by sealing him under Mount Etna

Mount Etna

Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina, Italy and Catania. Its Arabic name was Jebel Utlamat ....
. However, Zeus allowed Echidna and her children to live as a challenge to future heroes. She was an immortal and ageless nymph to Hesiod (Theogony above), but was killed where she slept by Argus Panoptes

Panoptes

In Greek mythology, Panoptes was an epithet for both Helios and Argus.Argus Panoptes was a giant with a hundred eyes. He was also the nymph Io 's brother....
, the hundred-eyed giant.

Typhon and Echidna's offsprings

The offspring of Typhon and Echidna were:

1. Nemean Lion
   Nemean Lion
   
   The Nemean lion was a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived in Nemea. He was eventually killed by Heracles. The lion was usually considered the offspring of Typhon and Echidna , but it was also said to have fallen from the moon, offspring of Zeus and Selene....
   
2. Ladon
   Ladon (mythology)
   
   Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined round the tree in the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. He was overcome and slain by Heracles....
   
3. Chimera
   Chimera (mythology)
   
   This article is about the Greek_Mythology creature. For other uses, see Chimera.In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
   
4. Sphinx
   Sphinx
   
   A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology....
   
5. Lernaean Hydra
   Lernaean Hydra
   
   In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna , noisome offspring of the earth goddess, Gaia. It was said to be the sibling of the Nemean Lion, the Stymphalian birds, the Chimera ,and Cerberus....
   
6. Cerberus
   Cerberus
   
   Cerberus is the name given to the entity which, in Greek mythology and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed dog which guards the gates of Hades, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping....
   
7. Orthrus
   Orthrus
   
   In Greek mythology, Orthrus was a multi-headed animal dog and a doublet of Cerberus, both whelped by the chthonic monster Echidna by Typhon....
   
8. Stymphalian birds
   Stymphalian birds
   
   In Greek mythology, the Stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with wings of brass and sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and were pets of Ares, the god of war....
   

Hesiod claims that Sphinx and the Nemean Lion were her children by her son, Orthrus.

According to Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Ancient Rome name for the mythical Ancient Greece hero Heracles, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene. Early Roman sources suggest that the imported Greek hero supplanted a mythic Italian shepherd called "Recaranus" or "Garanus", famous for his strength....
 had three children by her:

1. Agathyrsus
   Agathyrsi
   
   Agathyrsi were a people of Scythian, Thracians, or mixed Thraco-Scythic origin, who in the time of Herodotus occupied the plain of the Maris , in the region now known as Transylvania....
   
2. Gelonus
   Gelonus
   
   Gelonus, , , Helon, , was the capital of Scythia and the biggest Gord in Europe. It has been identified with the archeological site Bilske Horodyshche near the village of Bilsk in Poltava Region....
   
3. Scytha/Scylla
   Scylla
   
   Scylla , also known as Scylle , was one of the two monsters in Greek mythology that lived on either side of a narrow channel of water. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other?so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice versa....
   

See also

• Echidna
  Echidna
  
  Echidnas , also known as spiny anteaters, are four Extant taxon mammal species belonging to the Tachyglossidae Family of the monotremes....
  , a monotreme mammal of Australia and New Guinea named after the mythological monster.

Sources

• Kark Kerenyi. The Gods of the Greeks. Thames and Hudson, 1951.
• in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
  
  The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary.Edited by William Smith , the dictionary spans three volumes and 3,700 pages....
  .