Echidna – Mother Of All Monsters – A Cave-Dwelling Female Hybrid Creature In Greek Mythology

A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com - In Graeco-Roman tradition, the Echidna is a gigantic half-woman and half-snake hybrid creature. As a tall, full of charm, and beautiful woman from the waist below, she was a hideous serpent.

Echidna. Parco dei Mostri - Bomarzo, Italy. Image credit: Daderot – Public Domain

In other words, Echidna—described by Hesiod as an 'impossible monster'—is a remarkable creature and the mother of a pantheon of spirits with a fierce temperament. These spirits, among many other monstrous spirits, represented dark forces. These forces were created in the earliest times of the violent wars conducted by the gods. Some of these creatures survived the conflicts and continued to haunt and seriously endanger humans.

Echidna was an offspring of the primal gods Gaia and Tartarus (or Chrysaor and Callirhoe). Echidna never aged, but she was not immortal. She was a proud mother of many terrifying children with her brother and husband, Typhoon. She represented the corruption of the earth, decay, and disease.

One of them was Hydra, and others like Cerberus (Kérberos), the two-headed hound Orthos, who guarded Geryon's cattle and was killed by Heracles, the goat/lion/serpent Chimera, the Nemean Lion, the Sphinx, and the Eagle that ate Prometheus's liver.

Yet another extraordinary and frightening child of hers was the Griffin Vulture, a monstrous bird from Graeco-Roman mythology, and most probably Ladon, the many-headed, watchful, dragon-like serpent that guarded the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the sacred garden.

The daughter of an Echidna, Hydra.  Image credit: Yellow.Cat from Roma, Italy - CC BY 2.0

According to Pindar (Pindarus), c. 518 - 438 BC, an ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Echidna gnawed into the light from her mother's womb. She lived in a cavern close to the land of Scythia, and usually, she emerged, showing only her human parts to attract human males. Once she had captured her victims, she would quickly embrace them in her serpentine coils and consume them.

According to Herodotus, Greeks living in Pontus, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, told a story of an encounter between Heracles, the son of Zeus and a divine hero in Greek mythology, and this snaky female creature. Heracles drove Geryones' cattle through the area, which would later become Scythia. One morning, he awoke and discovered that his horses had vanished. While searching for them, he "found a creature of double form in a cave that was half maiden and half serpent."

She had the horses and promised to return them if Heracles would have sex with her. Heracles agreed, and she had three sons with him: Agathyrsus, Gelonus, and Scythes. She asked Heracles what she should do with his sons: "shall I keep them here (since I am the queen of this country), or shall I send them away to you?"

Heracles gave her a bow and belt and told her that when the boys were grown, whoever would draw the bow and wear the belt would keep him and banish the others. The youngest son, Scythes, fulfilled the requirements and became the founder of the Scythians.

Death Of Echidna

Many versions of the myths are associated with Echidna, known as the "mother of all monsters." One says Hercules, Bellerophon, or Oedipus killed her. According to another, she was strangled in her sleep by Argos Panoptes, a giant with a hundred (or three hundred) eyes who was Hera's servant.

Credit: MalchevAdobe Stock - 

The killing of the serpent-legged monster Echidna as she slept in her cave was believed to be Argos' Great achievement for the Olympian pantheon.

According to another story, Echidna was immortal. Zeus left her on earth after the victory over the Titans so that she and her descendants could later challenge heroes, according to Hesiod ('he, who emits the voice'), an ancient Greek poet who flourished c. 700 BC.

Most myths and legends about Echidna do not focus on her but on her famous and horrible monster children.

As told in the Iliad, the hero Bellerophon was ordered by the king of Lycia to kill the Chimera. The truth is that the king wanted Bellerophon to kill rather than the Chimera, but the hero, whom the gods miraculously protected, succeeded in killing Echidna's monster-child, Chimera, whom Bellerophon shot with an arrow.

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

Updated on March 28, 2024

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