Typhon

Zeus darting his lightning at Typhon, Chalcidian black-figured hydria, ca. 550 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 596)

Not to be confused with Typhoon.

Typhon (ancient Greek: Τυφῶν, Tuphōn), also Typheus/Typhoeus (Τυφωεύς, Tuphōeus), Typhaon (Τυφάων, Tuphaōn) or Typhos (Τυφώς, Tuphōs) is the final son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus, and is the most deadly monster of Greek mythology. Typhon attempts to destroy Zeus at the will of Gaia, because Zeus had imprisoned the Titans. Typhon was described in pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, as one of the largest and most fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands reached east and west and had a hundred dragon heads on each. His bottom half was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings, and fire flashed from his eyes. He was defeated by Zeus, who trapped Typhon underneath Mount Etna.

Accounts

Hesiod narrates Typhon's birth:

But when Zeus had driven the Titans from Olympus,

mother Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of

Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. —Hesiod, Theogony 820-822.

In the alternative account of the origin of Typhon (Typhoeus), the Homeric Hymn to Apollo makes the monster Typhaon at Delphi a son of archaic Hera in her Minoan form, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia and confined there in the enigmatic Arima, or land of the Arimoi, en Arimois (Iliad, ii. 781-783). It was in Cilicia that Zeus battled with the ancient monster and overcame him, in a more complicated story: It was not an easy battle, and Typhon temporarily overcame Zeus, cut the "sinews" from him and left him in the "leather sack", the korukos that is the etymological origin of the korukion andron, the Korykian or Corycian Cave in which Zeus suffers temporary eclipse as if in the Land of the Dead. The region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia had many opportunities for coastal Hellenes' connection with the Hittites to the north. From its first reappearance, the Hittite myth of Illuyankas has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon.^[1] Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins each note the close agreements. Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press) 1995, reconstructs in disciplined detail the flexible Indo-European poetic formula that underlies myth, epic and magical charm texts of the lashing and binding of Typhon.

Typhon was the last child of Gaia. He was rejected by all, even his brothers, the Titans, due to his monstrous appearance. Typhon began to plot his revenge when he met Echidna.

Offspring

Typhon fathered several children by his niece, Echidna, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, including the multiheaded hounds Cerberus and Orthros.

The Sphinx was sent by Hera to plague the city of Thebes. She was the most brilliant of Typhon's children, and would slay anyone who could not answer her riddles. When Oedipus finally answered her riddle, she threw herself into the ocean in a fit of fury and drowned.

The Nemean Lion was a brute with impenetrable skin. Selene, the moon goddess, adored the beast. Heracles was commanded to slay the Lion as the first of his Twelve Labors. First, he attempted to shoot arrows at it, then he used his great club, and was eventually forced to strangle the beast. He would then use the Lion's own claws to skin it, whereupon he wore its invulnerable hide as armor.

The Hydra, another one of Typhon's daughters, terrorized a spring at the lake of Lerna, near Argopolis, slaying anyone and anything that approached her lair with her noxious venom, save for a monstrous crab that was her companion. She and her crab were slain by Heracles as the second of his Twelve Labors.

Around this time, Typhon's last child, Chimera came of age. Chimera was completely unstoppable until Bellerophon with Pegasus killed her.

Battle with Zeus

Typhon started destroying cities and hurling mountains in a fit of rage. All of the gods of Olympus fled to their home. Only Zeus stood firm, and the battle raged, ending when Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon, trapping him.

The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods is described in detail by Hesiod^[2] as a vast grisly monster with a hundred serpent heads "with dark flickering tongues" flashing fire from their eyes and a din of voices and a hundred serpents legs, a feature shared by many primal monsters of Greek myth that extend in serpentine or scaly coils from the waist down. The titanic struggle created earthquakes and tsunamis.^[3] Once conquered by Zeus' thunderbolts, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, the common destiny of many such archaic adversaries, or he was confined beneath Mount Aetna (Pindar, Pythian Ode 1.19 - 20; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 370), where "his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it," or in other volcanic regions, where he is the cause of eruptions.

Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces, as Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan) is their "civilized" Olympian manifestation. Amongst his children by Echidna are Cerberus, the serpent-like Lernaean Hydra, the Chimera, the hundred-headed dragon Ladon, the half-woman half-lion Sphinx, the two-headed wolf Orthrus, and the Nemean Lion.

Typhon is also the father of hot dangerous storm winds which issue forth from the stormy pit of Tartarus, according to Hesiod.

In fiction

In the book The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan Typhon was imprisoned under Mount St. Helens and escaped in the second war of the Titans. He crossed America in the appearance of a storm system and almost arrived at Mount Olympus in New York, but was stopped by Poseidon. He was chained by the Cyclopes, including Percy Jackson's brother Tyson, and taken down a tunnel to Tartarus. His monstrous appearance made him look like different terrifying monsters, and Hudson river does not even reach his waist.

In "Call Me Titan", part of the Lord of the Fantastic anthology, Typhon (commonly using the name Typhoeus there) is released from his imprisonment under Mount Etna in modern times, and tries to find Zeus in order to settle the old score. However, it seems that the old gods have largely vanished.

Typhon is featured as a boss character in the PC game Titan Quest.

Typhon is featured in the Playstation 2 video game God of War II where the player as the Spartan character Kratos is sent by Gaia to visit him under Mount Etna.

Typhon is a recurring entity in the Final Fantasy series, often paired with his comrade Orthros (also known as Ultros).

Origin of Name

His name is apparently derived from the Greek τύφειν (typhein), to smoke, hence it is considered to be a possible etymology for the word typhoon, supposedly borrowed by the Persians (as طوفان Tufân) and Arabs to describe the cyclonic storms of the Indian Ocean^{[citation needed]}. The Greeks also frequently represented him as a storm-daemon, especially in the version where he stole Zeus's thunderbolts and wrecked the earth with storms (cf. Hesiod, Theogony; Nonnus, Dionysiaca)^{[citation needed]}. However, it is more widely accepted^{[by whom?]} that the word typhoon is derived from Chinese (台风 tai feng）) via Japanese.^{[citation needed]}

Related concepts and myths

Since Herodotus, Typhon has been identified with the Egyptian Set (interpretatio Graeca)^{[citation needed]}. In the Orphic tradition, Typhon leads the Titans when they attack and kill Dionysus, just as Set is responsible for the murder of Osiris. Furthermore, the slaying of Typhon by Zeus bears similarities to the killing of Vritra by Indra^[4](a deity also associated lightning and storms), and possibly the two stories are ultimately derived from a common Indo-European source^{[citation needed]}. Similarities can be found in the battle between Thor and Jormungand from Norse myths; mythologist Joseph Campbell also makes parallels to the slaying of Leviathan by YHWH, about which YHWH boasts to Job^[5]

Notes

References

• Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985
• Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, (1955) 1960, §36.1-3
• Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks 1951
• Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon 1995, 448-459
• Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian 2009

External links

• Typhoeus at Theoi compiled sources of myth in classical literature