- This article is about a mythological monster. To read about the lexicographer, please see Joachim Heinrich Campe.
A chthonic female monster in Greek mythology, Kampê ("crooked") was set by Kronos to guard the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus after Kronos imprisoned them there; she was killed by Zeus when he rescued the Cyclopes for help in the battle with the Titans[1] Campe was a she-dragon with a woman's head and torso and a scorpion-like tail. Nonnus, in Dionysiaca (18.23-264) gives the most elaborated description of her.[2] Joseph Eddy Fontenrose suggests that for Nonnus Campe is a Greek refiguring of Tiamat and that "she is Echidna under another name, as Nonnos indicates, calling her Echidnaean Enyo, identifying her snaky legs with echidna's," and "a female counterpart of his Typhon".[3]
In his lexicon Hesychius of Alexandria (K.614) noted that the poet Epicharmos had called Campe a kētos, or sea-monster.[4]
Kampe was also classified by Homer in the Iliad as a "great menace" to the gods as they stated that they havent seen so much viciousness since the killing of Kampe
Kampe is featured in the children's novel Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth, where she is a member of the Titan Kronos' army of monsters. She is first encountered serving as Briares' jailer on Alcatraz. Kampe is described as half woman and half dragon with the heads of various wild animals growing from her human torso, she also wields two poison-tipped scimitars.
Notes
- ^ pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 1.2.1.
- ^ Theoi.com: Kampe, including translated section from Dionysiaca
- ^ Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins 1974:243.
- ^ Max Mayer Die Giganten und Titanen 1887:232-34.
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