The Lucian of Samosata Project

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====== Typhon (Typhoeus) ======
===== Definition =====
Τυφωευς Τυφων  ★   Typhôeus, Typhôn   ★  Cyclone, Hurricane\\
Τυφαων Τυφως   ★   Typhaôn, Typhôs   ★   Smoking One (typhô)

===== Images =====

{{:cynics:typhon_zeus.jpg?175 |}} {{:cynics:typhon1.jpg?175 |}} {{:cynics:typhon2.jpg?175 |}} {{:cynics:typhon3.jpg?175 |}}\\

[[http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/Typhoeus.html|Source]]
===== Homeric Hymn 3 to Pythian Apollo - Birth of Typhon =====

<blockquote>She [Ekhidna the Drakaina of Delphoi] it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel **Typhaon** to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera bare him because she was angry with father Zeus, when Kronides bare all-glorious Athene in his head. Thereupon queenly Hera was angry and spoke among the assembled gods: ‘. . . Yes, now I will contrive that a son be born me to be foremost among the undying gods--and that without casting shame on the holy bond of wedlock between you and me. And I will not come to your bed, but will consort with the blessed gods far off from you.’
When she had so spoken, she went apart from the gods, being very angry. Then straightway large-eyed queenly Hera prayed, striking the ground flatwise with her hand, and speaking thus: ‘Hear now, I pray, Gaia (Earth) and wide Ouranos (Sky) above, and you Titanes gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartaros (Storm-Pit), and from whom are sprung both gods and men! Harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength--nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Kronos.’\\
Thus she cried and lashed the earth with her strong hand. Then life-giving Gaia (Earth) was moved: and when Hera saw it she was glad in heart, for she thought her prayer would be fulfilled. And thereafter she never came to the bed of wise Zeus for a full year . . . But when the months and days were fulfilled and the seasons duly came on as the earth moved round, she bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel **Typhaon**, to be a plague to men. Straightway large-eyed queenly Hera took him and bringing one evil thing to another such, gave him to the Drakaina; and she received him. And this **Typhaon** used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men.
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Source: Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. </blockquote>

===== Nonnus, Dionysiaca 1.145 - Description of Typhon =====

<blockquote>**Typhoeus** . . . yelled as his warcry the cries of all wild beasts together: the snakes that grew from him waved over his leopard's heads, licked the grim lions' manes, girdled with their curly tails spiral-wise round the bulls' horns, mingled the shooting poison of their long thin tongues with the foam-spittle of the boars . . . With trailing feet **Typhoeus** mounted close to the clouds: spreading abroad the far-scattered host of his arms, he shadowed the bright radiance of the unclouded sky by darting forth his tangled army of snakes . . . **Typhoeus** bowed his flashing eyebrows and shook his locks: every hair belched viper-poison and drenched the hills ... flinging the rocks about he leapt upon Olympos. While he dragged his crooked track with snaky foot, he spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperish bristles of his high head; as he marched, the solid earth did sink, and the steady ground of Kilikia shook to its foundations under those drakon-feet . . . many-armed **Typhoeus** roared for the fray with all the tongues of all his throats, challenging mighty Zeus. That sonorous voice reached [the distant streams of Okeanos] . . . as the monster spoke, that which answered the army of his voices, was not one concordant echo, but a babel of screaming sounds [i.e. from his animal heads]: when the monster arrayed him with all his manifold shapes, out rang the yowling of wolves, the roaring of lions, the grunting of boars, the lowing of cattle, the hissing of serpents, the bold yap of leopards, the jaws of rearing bears, the fury of gods. Then with his midmost man-shaped head the Gigante yelled out threats against Zeus.
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Source: Nonnus, Dionysiaca. Translated by Rouse, W H D. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 344, 354, 356. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940.</blockquote>

===== Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.39 - Description of Typhon =====

<blockquote>**Typhon** was a mixture of man and beast, the largest and strongest of all Ge's (Earth's) children. Down to the thighs he was human in form, so large that he extended beyond all the mountains while his head often touched even the stars. One hand reached to the west, the other to the east, and attached to these were one hundred heads of serpents. Also from the thighs down he had great coils of vipers, which extended to the top of his head and hissed mightily. All of his body was winged, and the hair that flowed in the wind from his head and cheeks was matted and dirty. In his eyes flashed fire. Such were the appearance and the size of **Typhon** as he hurled red-hot rocks at the sky itself, and set out for it with mixed hisses and shouts, as a great storm of fire boiled forth from his mouth.
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Source: Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer. Loeb Classical Library Volumes 121 & 122. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.</blockquote>

===== Hesiod, Theogony 306 - Father of Monsters =====

<blockquote>Men say that **Typhaon** the terrible, outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her [Ekhidna], the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bare Orthos the hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Kerberos (Cerberus) who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Haides, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Herakles . . . She was the mother of Khimaira (Chimera) who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a drakon (dragon); and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Her did Pegasos and noble Bellerophontes slay.
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Source: Source: Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. </blockquote>

===== Hesiod, Theogony 820 - Zeus versus Typhon =====

<blockquote>Now after Zeus had driven the Titanes out of heaven, gigantic Gaia (Earth), in love with Tartaros (the Pit), by means of golden Aphrodite, bore the youngest of her children, **Typhoeus**; the hands and arms of him are mighty, and have work in them, and the feet of the powerful god were tireless, and up from his shoulders there grew a hundred snake heads, those of a dreaded drakon, and the heads licked with dark tongues, and from the eyes on the inhuman heads fire glittered from under the eyelids: from all his heads fire flared from his eyes' glancing; and inside each one of these horrible heads there were voices that threw out every sort of horrible sound, for sometimes it was speech such as the gods could understand, but at other times, the sound of a bellowing bull, proud-eyed and furious beyond holding, or again like a lion shameless in cruelty, or again it was like the barking of dogs, a wonder to listen to, or again he would whistle so the tall mountains re-echoed to it.

And now that day there would have been done a thing past mending, and he, **Typhoeus**, would have been master of gods and of mortals, had not [Zeus] the father of gods and men been sharp to perceive it and gave a hard, heavy clap of thunder, so that the earth gave grisly reverberation, and the wide heaven above, and the sea, and the streams of Okeanos, and the underground chambers. And great Olympos was shaken under the immortal feet of the master as he moved, and the earth groaned beneath him, and the heat and blaze from both of them was on the dark-faced sea, from the thunder and lightning of Zeus and from the flame of the monster, from his blazing bolts and from the scorch and breath of his stormwinds, and all the ground and the sky and the sea boiled, and towering waves were tossing and beating all up and down the promontories in the wind of these immortals, and a great shaking of the earth came on, and Haides, lord over the perished dead, trembled, and the Titanes under Tartaros, who live beside Kronos, trembled to the dread encounter and the unending clamour.

But now, when Zeus had headed up his own strength, seizing his weapons, thunder, lightning, and the glowering thunderbolt, he made a leap from Olympos, and struck, setting fire to all those wonderful heads set about on the dreaded monster. Then, when Zeus had put him down with his strokes, **Typhoeus** crashed, crippled, and the gigantic earth groaned beneath him, and the flame from the great lord so thunder-smitten ran out along the darkening and steep forests of the mountains as he was struck, and a great part of the gigantic earth burned in the wonderful wind of his heat, and melted, as tin melts in the heat of the carefully grooved crucible when craftsmen work it, or as iron, though that is the strongest substance, melts under stress of blazing fire in the mountain forests worked by handicraft of Hephaistos inside the divine earth. So earth melted in the flash of the blazing fire; but Zeus in tumult of anger cast **Typhoeus** into broad Tartaros.

And from **Typhoeus** comes the force of winds blowing wetly, except Notos (the South Wind) and Boreas (the North Wind) and clear Zephyros (the West Wind). These are a god-sent kind, and a great blessing to men; but the others blow fitfully upon the seas. Some rush upon the misty sea and work great havoc among men with their evil, raging blasts; for varying with the season they blow, scattering ships and destroying sailors. And men who meet these upon the sea have no help against the mischief. Others again over the boundless, flowering earth spoil the fair fields of men who dwell below, filling them with dust and cruel uproar.
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Source: Source: Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. </blockquote>


===== Pindar, Pythian Ode 1.15 - Tartarean Prison of Typhon =====

<blockquote>That enemy of the gods, who lies in fearsome Tartaros, **Typhon** the hundred-headed, who long since was bred in the far-famed Kilikion cave. Today the cliffs that bar the sea o'er Kumai and Sikilia's (Sicily's) isle, press heavy on his shaggy breast, and that tall pillar rising to the height of heaven, contains him close--Aitna (Etna).
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Source: The Extant Odes of Pindar. Translated into English with Introduction and Short Notes by Ernest Myers, M.A. 1904. First Edition printed 1874. </blockquote>

===== Homer, Iliad 2.780 - Beneath the Land of the Arimoi =====

<blockquote>The ground echoed under them, Zeus who delights in thunder were angry, as when he batters the earth about **Typhoeus**, in the land of the Arimoi, where they say **Typhoeus** lies prostrate.
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Source: Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Murray, A T. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1924. </blockquote>

===== Herodotus, Histories 3.5 - Beneath the Serbonian Marsh =====

<blockquote>Now the only apparent way of entry into Aigyptos (Egypt) is this. The road runs from Phoinikia as far as the borders of the city of Kadytis . . . from Ienysus as far as the Serbonian marsh, beside which the promontory Kasios stretches seawards; from this Serbonian marsh, where **Typho** is supposed to have been hidden, the country is Aigyptos (Egypt). Now between Ienysus and the Kasian mountain and the Serbonian marsh there lies a wide territory for as much as three days' journey, terribly arid.
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Source: The History Of Herodotus Volume 1 (of 2); Author: Herodotus; Translator: G. C. Macaulay </blockquote>

===== Pindar, Pythian Ode 1.15 - Typhon Imprisoned Beneath Mount Etna =====

<blockquote>That enemy of the gods, who lies in fearsome Tartaros, **Typhon** the hundred-headed, who long since was bred in the far-famed Kilikian (Cilician) cave. Today the cliffs that bar the sea o'er Kymai (Cumae) and Sikilia's (Sicily's) isle, press heavy on his shaggy breast, and that tall pillar rising to the height of heaven, contains him close--Aitna (Etna) the white-clad summit, nursing through all the year her frozen snows. From the dark depths below she flings aloft fountains of purest fires, that no foot can approach. In the broad light of day rivers of glowing smoke pour forth a lurid stream, and in the dark a red and rolling flood tumbles down the boulders to the deep sea's plain in riotous clatter. These dread flames that creeping monster sends aloft, a marvel to look on, and a wondrous tale even to hear, from those whose eyes have seen it. Such is the being bound between the peaks of Aitna in her blackened leaves and the flat plain, while all his back is torn and scarred by the rough couch on which he lies outstretched.
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Source: Source: The Extant Odes of Pindar. Translated into English with Introduction and Short Notes by Ernest Myers, M.A. 1904. First Edition printed 1874. </blockquote>

===== Herodotus, Histories 2.156 - Equated with Egyptian God Set =====

<blockquote>[Leto, the Egyptian goddess Buto] taking charge of Apollo [Egyptian god Horus] from Isis, hid him for safety in this island [Khemmis] which is now said to float, when **Typhon** [Egyptian god Set] came hunting through the world, keen to find the son of Osiris. Apollon [Horus] and Artemis [Bastet] were (they say) children of Dionysus [Egyptian Osiris] and Isis, and Leto [Egyptian Buto] was made their nurse and preserver; in Egyptian, Apollon is Horus, Demeter Isis, Artemis Bubastis.
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Source: The History Of Herodotus Volume 1 (of 2); Author: Herodotus; Translator: G. C. Macaulay </blockquote>