| Echidna | |
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Real Name |
Echidna |
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First Appearance |
Greek Myth |
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Created by |
Greek Myth |
Origin[]
In Greek mythology, Echidna was a monster, half-woman and half-snake, who lived alone in a cave. She was the mate of the fearsome monster Typhon and was the mother of many of the most famous monsters of Greek myth. Her offspring included Orthrus, Cerberus, the Hydra, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Nemean Lion, the Caucasian Eagle, Ladon, the Crommyonian Sow, Gorgon (mother of Medusa), the Colchain Dragon, and Scylla.
Hesiod's 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". Hesiod's apparent association of the eating of raw flesh with Echidna's snake half suggests that he may have supposed that Echidna's snake half ended in a snake-head. 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.
In the Orphic account (mentioned above), Echidna is described as having the head of a beautiful woman with long hair and a serpent's body from the neck down. Nonnus, in his Dionysiaca, describes Echidna as being "hideous" with "horrible poison".
Echidna's family tree varies by author. The oldest genealogy relating to Echidna, Hesiod's Theogony (c. 8th – 7th century BC), is unclear on several points. According to Hesiod, Echidna was born to a "she" who was probably meant by Hesiod to be the sea goddess Ceto, making Echidna's likely father the sea god Phorcys; however the "she" might instead refer to the Oceanid Callirhoe, which would make Medusa's offspring Chrysaor the father of Echidna. The mythographer Pherecydes of Athens (5th century BC) has Echidna as the daughter of Phorcys, without naming a mother.
Other authors give Echidna other parents. According to the geographer Pausanias (2nd century AD), Epimenides (7th or 6th century BC) had Echidna as the daughter of the Oceanid Styx (goddess of the river Styx) and one Peiras (otherwise unknown to Pausanias), while according to the mythographer Apollodorus (1st or 2nd century AD), Echidna was the daughter of Tartarus and Gaia. In one account, from the Orphic tradition, Echidna was the daughter of Phanes (the Orphic father of all gods).
Although for Hesiod Echidna was immortal and ageless, according to Apollodorus Echidna continued to prey on the unfortunate "passers-by" until she was finally killed, while she slept, by Argus Panoptes, the hundred-eyed giant who served Hera.
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
All appearances of Echidna from before Janurary 1, 1929 are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
- Theogony
- Dionysiaca
- Metamorphosis
- The Phoenician Women
- Women of Trachis
- Acts of Philip
- Illiad
Notes[]
- The Echidna, a monotreme mammal of Australia and New Guinea, was named after this mythological monster.