Echidna (mythology)
[12] 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.
[14] According to Hesiod's Theogony, the "terrible" and "lawless" Typhon "was joined in love to [Echidna], the maid with glancing eyes" and she bore "fierce offspring".
[22] While mentioning Cerberus and "other monsters" as being the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, the mythographer Acusilaus (6th century BC) adds the Caucasian Eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus.
[26] Hyginus[27] in his list of offspring of Echidna (all by Typhon), retains from the above Cerberus, the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Hydra and Ladon, and adds "Gorgon" (by which Hyginus means the mother of Medusa, whereas Hesiod's three Gorgons, of which Medusa was one, were the daughters of Ceto and Phorcys), the Colchian dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece[28] and Scylla.
[29] Nonnus makes Echidna the mother of an unnamed, venom-spitting, "huge" son, with "snaky" feet, an ally of Cronus in his war with Zeus, who was killed by Ares.
[33] Echidna is sometimes identified with the Viper who was the mother by Heracles of Scythes, an eponymous king of the Scythians, along with his brothers Agathyrsus ("much raging")[34] and Gelonus (see below).
[40] Several locales, Cilicia, Syria, Lydia, and the Island of Pithecussae (modern Ischia), each associated with Typhon in various ways, are given by Strabo as possible locations for Hesiod's "Arima" (or Homer's "Arimoi").
The region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus (modern Kızkalesi, Turkey) is often associated with Typhon's birth.
[43] The fourth-century BC historian Callisthenes, located the Arimoi and the Arima mountains in Cilicia, near the Calycadnus river, the Corycian cave and the Sarpedon promontory.
[46] Just across the Gulf of Issus from Corycus, in ancient Syria, was Mount Kasios (modern Jebel Aqra in Turkey) and the Orontes River, said to be the site of the battle of Typhon and Zeus.
[49] According to Strabo, some placed the Arimoi and the battle between Typhon and Zeus at Catacecaumene,[50] while Xanthus of Lydia added that "a certain Arimus" ruled there.
[53] Another place mentioned by Strabo as being associated with Arima is the volcanic island of Pithecussae, off the coast of ancient Cumae in Italy.
[61] 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 and this snaky creature.
Though that monster is usually said to be the male serpent Python, in the oldest account of this story, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the god kills a nameless she-serpent (drakaina), subsequently called Delphyne, who had been Typhon's foster-mother.
[71] According to Pausanias, Echidna was depicted, along with Typhon, on the sixth century BC Doric-Ionic temple complex at Amyclae known as the throne of Apollo, designed by Bathycles of Magnesia.
