Typhoeus, also known as Typhon

• Aeschylus
• Apollodorus
• Apollonius Rhodius
• Hesiod
• Homer
• Homeric hymns
• Hyginus
• Nonnus
• Ovid
• Valerius Flaccus
• Virgil

AESCHYLUS, PROMETHEUS BOUND, translated H. W. SMYTH

[354] Pity moved me, too, at the sight of the earth-born dweller of the Cilician caves curbed by violence, that destructive monster of a hundred heads, impetuous Typhon. He withstood all the gods, hissing out terror with horrid jaws, while from his eyes lightened a hideous glare, as though he would storm by force the sovereignty of Zeus. But the unsleeping bolt of Zeus came upon him, the swooping lightning brand with breath of flame, which struck him, frightened, from his loud-mouthed boasts; then, stricken to the very heart, he was burnt to ashes and his strength blasted from him by the lightning bolt. And now, a helpless and a sprawling bulk, he lies hard by the narrows of the sea, pressed down beneath the roots of Aetna; while on the topmost summit Hephaestus sits and hammers the molten ore. There, one day, shall burst forth rivers of fire, with savage jaws devouring the level fields of Sicily, land of fair fruit—such boiling rage shall Typho, although charred by the blazing lightning of Zeus, send spouting forth with hot jets of appalling, fire-breathing surge.

AESCHYLUS, SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, translated H. W. SMYTH

[501] First Onca Pallas, who dwells near the city, close by the gate, and who loathes outrageousness in a man, will fend him off like a dangerous snake away from nestlings. Moreover, Hyperbius, Oenops' trusty son, is chosen to match him, man to man, as he is eager to search out his fate in the crisis that chance has wrought—neither in form, nor spirit nor in the wielding of his arms does he bear reproach. Hermes has appropriately pitted them against each other. For the man is hostile to the man he faces in battle, and the gods on their shields also meet as enemies. The one has fire-breathing Typhon, while father Zeus stands upright on Hyperbius' shield, his lightening bolt aflame in his hand. And no one yet has seen Zeus conquered. Such then is the favor of the divine powers: we are with the victors, they with the vanquished, if Zeus in fact proves stronger in battle than Typhon. And it is likely that the mortal adversaries will fare as do their gods; and so, in accordance with the symbol, Zeus will be a savior for Hyperbius since he resides on his shield.

APOLLODORUS, THE LIBRARY, Book 1, translated H. W. SMYTH

[1.6.3] When the gods had overcome the giants, Earth, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and brought forth Typhon in Cilicia, a hybrid between man and beast. In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth. As far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, and his head often brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; and fire flashed from his eyes. Such and so great was Typhon when, hurling kindled rocks, he made for the very heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. But when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight, and being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals. However Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. There, seeing the monster sore wounded, he grappled with him. But Typhon twined about him and gripped him in his coils, and wresting the sickle from him severed the sinews of his hands and feet, and lifting him on his shoulders carried him through the sea to Cilicia and deposited him on arrival in the Corycian cave. Likewise he put away the sinews there also, hidden in a bearskin, and he set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, who was a half-bestial maiden. But Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus. And having recovered his strength Zeus suddenly from heaven, riding in a chariot of winged horses, pelted Typhon with thunderbolts and pursued him to the mountain called Nysa, where the Fates beguiled the fugitive; for he tasted of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby. So being again pursued he came to Thrace, and in fighting at Mount Haemus he heaved whole mountains. But when these recoiled on him through the force of the thunderbolt, a stream of blood gushed out on the mountain, and they say that from that circumstance the mountain was called Haemus. And when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown. So much for that subject.

APOLLODORUS, THE LIBRARY, Book 2, translated H. W. SMYTH

[2.3.1] ...It is said, too, that this Chimera was bred by Amisodarus, as Homer also affirms, and that it was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates.

[2.5.1] When Hercules heard that, he went to Tiryns and did as he was bid by Eurystheus. First, Eurystheus ordered him to bring the skin of the Nemean lion; now that was an invulnerable beast begotten by Typhon

[2.5.10] As a tenth labour he was ordered to fetch the kine of Geryon from Erythia. Now Erythia was an island near the ocean; it is now called Gadira. This island was inhabited by Geryon, son of Chrysaor by Callirrhoe, daughter of Ocean. He had the body of three men grown together and joined in one at the waist, but parted in three from the flanks and thighs. He owned red kine, of which Eurytion was the herdsman and Orthus, the two-headed hound, begotten by Typhon on Echidna, was the watchdog.

[2.5.11] ...These apples were not, as some have said, in Libya, but on Atlas among the Hyperboreans. They were presented by Earth to Zeus after his marriage with Hera, and guarded by an immortal dragon with a hundred heads, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, which spoke with many and divers sorts of voices...And having crossed to the opposite mainland he (Heracles) shot on the Caucasus the eagle, offspring of Echidna and Typhon, that was devouring the liver of Prometheus.

APOLLODORUS, THE LIBRARY, Book 3, translated H. W. SMYTH

[3.5.8] Laius was buried by Damasistratus, king of Plataea, and Creon, son of Menoeceus, succeeded to the kingdom. In his reign a heavy calamity befell Thebes. For Hera sent the Sphinx, whose mother was Echidna and her father Typhon; and she had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird.

APOLLONIUS RHODIUS, ARGONAUTICA, Book 2, translated R. C. SEATON

[1207] Nay, to seize the fleece in spite of Aeetes is no easy task; so huge a serpent keeps guard round and about it, deathless and sleepless, which Earth herself brought forth on the sides of Caucasus, by the rock of Typhaon, where Typhaon, they say, smitten by the bolt of Zeus, son of Cronos, when he lifted against the god his sturdy hands, dropped from his head hot gore; and in such plight he reached the mountains and plain of Nysa, where to this day he lies whelmed beneath the waters of the Serbonian lake

HESIOD, THEOGONY, translated by H. G. EVELYN-WHITE

[300] And there she has a cave deep down under a hollow rock far from the deathless gods and mortal men. There, then, did the gods appoint her a glorious house to dwell in: and she keeps guard in Arima beneath the earth, grim Echidna, a nymph who dies not nor grows old all her days. Men say that Typhaon the terrible, outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her, the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bare Orthus the hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And again she bore a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, whom the goddess, white-armed Hera nourished, being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles. And her Heracles, the son of Zeus, of the house of Amphitryon, together with warlike Iolaus, destroyed with the unpitying sword through the plans of Athene the spoil-driver. She was the mother of Chimaera who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay; but Echidna was subject in love to Orthus and brought forth the deadly Sphinx which destroyed the Cadmeans, and the Nemean lion, which Hera, the good wife of Zeus, brought up and made to haunt the hills of Nemea, a plague to men. There he preyed upon the tribes of her own people and had power over Tretus of Nemea and Apesas: yet the strength of stout Heracles overcame him.

[820] But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at anothers, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods been quick to perceive it. But he thundered hard and mightily: and the earth around resounded terribly and the wide heaven above, and the sea and Ocean's streams and the nether parts of the earth. Great Olympus reeled beneath the divine feet of the king as he arose and earth groaned thereat. And through the two of them heat took hold on the dark-blue sea, through the thunder and lightning, and through the fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt. The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking. Hades trembled where he rules over the dead below, and the Titans under Tartarus who live with Cronos, because of the unending clamour and the fearful strife. So when Zeus had raised up his might and seized his arms, thunder and lightning and lurid thunderbolt, he leaped form Olympus and struck him, and burned all the marvellous heads of the monster about him. But when Zeus had conquered him and lashed him with strokes, Typhoeus was hurled down, a maimed wreck, so that the huge earth groaned. And flame shot forth from the thunder- stricken lord in the dim rugged glens of the mount, when he was smitten. A great part of huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapour and melted as tin melts when heated by men's art in channelled crucibles; or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is softened by glowing fire in mountain glens and melts in the divine earth through the strength of Hephaestus. Even so, then, the earth melted in the glow of the blazing fire. And in the bitterness of his anger Zeus cast him into wide Tartarus.

[869] And from Typhoeus come boisterous winds which blow damply, except Notus and Boreas and clear Zephyr. These are a god-sent kind, and a great blessing to men; but the others blow fitfully upon the seas. Some rush upon the misty sea and work great havoc among men with their evil, raging blasts; for varying with the season they blow, scattering ships and destroying sailors. And men who meet these upon the sea have no help against the mischief. Others again over the boundless, flowering earth spoil the fair fields of men who dwell below, filling them with dust and cruel uproar.

[881] But when the blessed gods had finished their toil, and settled by force their struggle for honours with the Titans, they pressed far-seeing Olympian Zeus to reign and to rule over them, by Earth's prompting. So he divided their dignities amongst them.

HOMER, THE ILIAD, translated IAN JOHNSTON

[860] The soldiers, like a fire consuming all the land, moved on out. Earth groaned under them, just as it does when Zeus, who loves thunder, in his anger lashes the land around Typhoeus, among the Arimi, where people say Typhoeus has his lair. That's how the earth groaned loudly under marching feet.

HOMERIC HYMNS, HYMN To Pythian Apollo, translated H. G. EVELYN-WHITE

[300] But near by was a sweet flowing spring, and there with his strong bow the lord, the son of Zeus, killed the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin- shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague. She it was who once received from gold-throned Hera and brought up fell, cruel Typhaon to be a plague to men. Once on a time Hera bare him because she was angry with father Zeus, when the Son of Cronos bare all-glorious Athena in his head. Thereupon queenly Hera was angry and spoke thus among the assembled gods:

[331] When she had so spoken, she went apart from the gods, being very angry. Then straightway large-eyed queenly Hera prayed, striking the ground flatwise with her hand, and speaking thus: "Hear now, I pray, Earth and wide Heaven above, and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth about great Tartarus, and from whom are sprung both gods and men! Harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength -- nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Cronos. Thus she cried and lashed the earth with her strong hand. Then the life-giving earth was moved: and when Hera saw it she was glad in heart, for she thought her prayer would be fulfilled. And thereafter she never came to the bed of wise Zeus for a full year, not to sit in her carved chair as aforetime to plan wise counsel for him, but stayed in her temples where many pray, and delighted in her offerings, large-eyed queenly Hera. But when the months and days were fulfilled and the seasons duly came on as the earth moved round, she bare one neither like the gods nor mortal men, fell, cruel Typhaon, to be a plague to men. Straightway large-eyed queenly Hera took him and bringing one evil thing to another such, gave him to the dragoness; and she received him. And this Typhaon used to work great mischief among the famous tribes of men. Whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away

HYGINUS, ASTRONOMICA, Book 2, translated MARY GRANT

[2.15.3] In return for this deed, Jupiter, to confer a like favour on men, gave a woman to them, fashioned by Vulcan, and endowed with all kinds of gifts by the will of the gods. For this reason she was called Pandora. But Prometheus he bound with an iron chain to a mountain in Scythia named Caucasus for thirty thousand years, as Aeschylus, writer of tragedies, says. Then, too, he sent an eagle to him to eat out his liver which was constantly renewed at night. Some have said that this eagle was born from Typhon and Echidna, other from Terra and Tartarus, but many point out it was made by the hands of Vulcan and given life by Jove.

[2.28.2] Egyptian priests and some poets say that once when many gods had assembled in Egypt, suddenly Typhon, an exceedingly fierce monster and deadly enemy of the gods, came to that place. Terrified by him, they changed their shapes into other forms: Mercury became an ibis, Apollo, the bird that is called Thracian, Diana, a cat. For this reason they say the Egyptians do not permit these creatures to be injured, because they are called representations of gods. At this same time, they say, Pan cast himself into the river, making the lower part of his body a fish, and the rest a goat, and thus escaped from Typhon. Jove, admiring his shrewdness, put his likeness among the constellations.

[2.30.1] FISHES: Diognetus Erythraeus says that once Venus and her son Cupid came in Syria to the river Euphrates. There Typhon, of whom we have already spoken, suddenly appeared. Venus and her son threw themselves into the river and there changed their forms to fishes, and by so doing this escaped danger. So afterwards the Syrians, who are adjacent to these regions, stopped eating fish, fearing to catch them lest with like reason they seem either to oppose the protection of the gods, or to entrap the gods themselves.

HYGINUS, FABULAE, translated MARY GRANT

[p.4] From Earth and Tartarus, Giants: Enceladus, Coeus, Elentes, Mophius, Astraeus, Pelorus, Pallas, Emphytus, Rhoecus, Ienios, Agrius, Alemone, Ephialtes, Eurytus, Effracorydon, Themoises, Theodamas, Otus, Typhon, Polyboetes, Menephriarus, Abesus, Colophonus, Iapetus."

[p.35] From Typhon and Echidna: Gorgon, Cerberus, the dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece at Colchis, Scylla who was woman above but dog-forms below [whom Hercules killed]; Chimaera, Sphinx who was in Boeotia, Hydra serpent which had nine heads which Hercules killed, and the dragon of the Hesperides.

[125] ...From there he came to Scylla, daughter of Typhon, who was woman above, but fish from the hips down, with six dogs joined to her body...

[151] CHILDREN OF TYPHON AND ECHIDNA: From Typhon the giant and Echidna were born Gorgon, the three-headed dog Cerberus, the dragon which guarded the apples of the Hesperides across the ocean, the Hydra which Hercules killed by the spring of Lerna, the dragon which guarded the ram's fleece at Colchis, Scylla who was woman above but dog below, with six dog-forms sprung from her body, the Sphinx which was in Boeotia, the Chimaera in Lycia which had the fore part of a lion, the hind part of a snake, while the she-goat itself formed the middle.

[152] TYPHON: Tartarus begat by Tartara, Typhon, a creature of immense size and fearful shape, who had a hundred dragon heads springing from his shoulders. He challenged Jove to see if Jove would content with him for the rule. Jove struck his breast with a flaming thunderbolt. When it was burning him he put Mount Etna, which is in Sicily, over him. From this it is said to burn still.

[196] PAN: When the god in Egypt feared the monster Typhon, Pan bade them transform themselves into wild beasts the more easily to deceive him. Jove later killed him with a thunderbolt. By the will of the gods, since by his warning they had avoided Typhon's violence, Pan was put among the number of the stars, Since at that time he had changed himself into a goat, he was called Aegocerus. We call him Capricorn.

NONNUS, DIONYSIACA, Book 1, translated by W. H. D. ROUSE

[154] Then at a nod from his mother, the Earth, Cilician Typhoeus stretched out his hands, and stole the snowy tools of Zeus, the tools of fire; then spreading his row of rumble-rattling throats, he yelled as his warcry the cries of all wild beasts together: the snakes that grew from him waved over his leopards’ heads, licked the grim lions’ manes, girdled with their curly tails spiral-wise round the bulls’ horns, mingled the shooting poison of their long thin tongues with the foam-spittle of the boars.

[163] Now he laid the gear of Cronides in a cubby-hole of the rock, and spread the harvest of his clambering hands into the upper air. And that battalion of hands! One throttled Cynosuris beside the ankle-tip of Olympos; one gripped the Parrhasian Bear’s mane as the rested on heaven’s axis, and dragged her off; another caught the Oxdrover and knocked him out; another dragged Phosphoros, and in vain under the circling turning-post sounded the whistling of the heavenly lash in the morning; he carried off the Dawn, and held in the Bull, so that timeless, half-complete, horsewoman Season rested her team. And in the shadowy curls of his serpenthair heads the light was mingled with gloom; the Moon shone rising in broad day with the Sun.

[176] Still there was no rest. The Giant turned back, and passed from north to south; he left one pole and stood by the other. With a long arm he grasped the Charioteer, and flogged the back of hailstorming Aigoceros; he dragged the two Fishes out of the sky and cast them into the sea; he buffeted the Ram, that midnipple star of Olympos, who balances with equal pin day and darkness over the fiery orb of his spring-time neighbour. With trailing feet Typhoeus mounted close to the clouds: spreading abroad the far-scattered host of his arms, he shadowed the bright radiance of the unclouded sky by darting forth his tangled army of snakes. One of them ran up right through the rim of the polar circuit and skipt upon the backbone of the heavenly Serpent, hissing his mortal challenge. One made for Cepheus’s daughter, and with starry fingers twisting a ring as close as the other, enchained Andromeda, bound already, with a second bond aslant under her bands. Another, a horned serpent, entwined about the forked horns of the Bull’s horned head of shape like his own, and dangled coiling over the Bull’s brow, tormenting with open jaws the Hyades opposite ranged like a crescent moon. Poison-spitting tangles of serpents in a bunch girdled the Ox-drover. Another made a bold leap, when he saw another Snake in Olympos, and jumped around the Ophiuchos’s arm that held the viper; then curving his neck and coiling his crawling belly, he braided a second chaplet about Ariadne’s crown.

[202] Then Typhoeus manyarmed turned to both ends, shaking with his host of arms the girdle of Zephryos and the wing of Euros opposite, dragging first Phosphoros, then Hesperos and the crest of Atlas. Many a time in the weedy gulf he seized Poseidon’s chariot, and dragged it from the depths of the sea to land; again he pulled out a stallion by his brine-soaked mane from the undersea manger, and threw the vagabond nag to the vault of heaven, shooting his shot at Olympos – hit the Sun’s chariot, and the horses on their round whinnied under the yoke. Many a time he took a bull at rest from his rustic plowtree and shook him with a threatening hand, bellow as he would, then shot him against the Moon like another moon, and stayed her course, then rushed hissing against the goddess, checking with the bridle her bulls’ white yoke-straps, while he poured out the mortal whistle of a poison-spitting viper.

[219] But Titan Mene would not yield to the attack. Battling against the Giant’s heads, like-horned to hers, she cared many a scar on the shining orb of her bull’s horn; and Selene’s radiant cattle bellowed amazed at the gaping chasm of Typhaon’s throat. The Seasons undaunted armed the starry battalions, and the lines of heavenly Constellations in a disciplined circle came shining to the fray. A varied host maddened the upper air with clamour and with flame: some whose portion was Boreas, others the back of Lips in the west, or the eastern zones or the recesses of the south. The unshaken congregation of the fixt stars with unanimous acclamation left their places and caught up their travelling fellows. The axis passing through the heaven’s hollow and fixt upright in the midst, groaned at the sound. Orion the hunter, seeing these tribes of wild beasts, drew his sword; the blade of the Tanagraian brand sparkled bright as its master made ready for attack; his thirsty Dog, shooting light from his fiery chin, bubbled up in his starry throat and let out a hot bark, and blew out the steam from his teeth against Typhaon’s beasts instead of the usual hare. The sky was full of din, and, answering the seven-zoned heaven, the seven-throated cry of the Pleiads raised the war-shout from as many throats; and the planets as many again banged out an equal noise.

[244] Radiant Ophiuchos, seeing the Giant’s direful snaky shape, from his hands so potent against evil shook off the gray coils of the fire-bred serpents, and shot the dappled coiling missile, while tempests roared round his flames – the viper-arrows flew slanting and maddened the air. Then the Archer let fly a shaft, – that bold comrade of fish-like Aigoceros; the Dragon, divided between the two Bears, and visible within the circle of the Wain, brandished the fiery trail of the heavenly spine; the Oxherd, Erigone’s neighbour, attendant driver of the Wain, hurled his crook with flashing arm; beside the knee of the Image and his neighbour the Swan, the starry Lyre presaged the victory of Zeus.

[258] Now Typhoeus shifted to the rocks, leaving the air, to flog the seas. He grasped and shook the peak of Corycios, and crushing the flood of the river that belongs to Cicilica, joined Tarsos and Cydnos together in one hand; then hurled a volley of cliffs upon the mustered waves of the brine. As the Giant advanced with feet trailing in the briny flood, his bare loins were seen dry through the water, which broke heavy against his mid-thigh crashing and booming; his serpents afloat sounded the charge with hissings from brine-beaten throats, and spitting poison led the attack upon the sea. There stood Typhon in the fish-giving sea, his feet firm in the depths of the weedy bottom, his belly in the air and crushed in clouds: hearing the terrible roar from the mane-bristling lions of his giant’s head, the sea-lion lurked in the oozy gulf. There was no room in the deep for all its phalanx of leviathans, since the Earthborn monster covered a whole sea, larger than the land, with flanks that no sea could cover. The seals bleated, the dolphins hid in the deep water; the manyfooted squid, a master of craft, weaving his trailing web of crisscross knots, stuck fast on his familiar rock, making his limbs look like a pattern on the stone. All the world was a-tremble: the love-maddened murry herself, drawn by her passion for the serpent’s bed, shivered under the god-desecrating breath of these seafaring serpents. The waters piled up and touched Olympos with precipitous seas; as the streams mounted on high, the bird never touched by rain found the sea his neighbour, and washed himself. Typhoeus, holding a counterfeit of the deep-sea trident, with one earthshaking flip from his enormous hand broke off an island at the edge of the continent which is the kerb of the brine, circled it round and round, and hurled the whole thing like a ball. And while the Giant waged his war, his hurtling arms drew near to the stars, and obscured the sun, as they attacked Olympos, and cast the precipitous crag.

[294] Now after the frontier of the deep, after the well-laid foundation of the earth, this bastard Zeus armed his hand with fire-barbed thunderbolt: raising the gear of Zeus was hard work for the monster Typhoeus with two hundred furious hands, so great was the weight; but Cronion would lightly lift it with one hand. No clouds were about the Giant: against his dry arms, the thunder let out a dull-sounding note booming gently without a clap, and in the drought of the air scarcely did a thirsty dew trickle in snowflakes without a drop in them; the lightning was dim, and only a softish flame shone sparkling shamefacedly, like smoke shot with flame. The thunderbolts felt the hands of a novice, and all their manly blaze was unmanned. Often they slipped out of those many many hands, and went leaping of themselves; the brands went astray, missing the familiar hand of their heavenly master. As a man beats a horse that loathes the bit, – some stranger, a novice untaught, flogging a restive nag, as he tries again and again in vain, and the defiant beast knows by instinct the changeling hand of an unfamiliar driver, leaping madly, rearing straight into the air with hind-hooves planted immovable, lifting the forelegs and pawing out to the front, raising the neck till the mane is shaken abroad over both shoulders at once: so the monster laboured with this hand or that to lift the fugitive flash of the roving thunderbolt.

[321] Well, at the very time when Cadmos paid his visit to Arima in his wanderings, the seafaring bull set down the girl from his withers, quite dry, upon the shore by Dicte; but Hera saw Cronides shaken with passion, and mad with jealousy she called out with an angry laugh: “Phoibos, go and stand by your father, or some plowman may catch Zeus and put him to some earth-shaking plowtree. I wish one would catch him and put him to the plow! Then I could shout to my lord – ‘Learn to bear two goads now, Cupid’s (Eros’s’) and the farmer’s! You must be verily Lord of Pastures, my fine Archer, and shepherd your parent, or cattle-driver Selene may put Cronides under the yoke, she may score Zeus’s back with her merciless lash when she is off to herdsman Endymion’s bed in a hurry! Zeus your Majesty! it is a pity Io did not see you coming like that to court her, when she was a heifer with horns on her forehead! she might have bred you a little bull as horny as his father! Look out for Hermes! The professional cattle-lifter may think he is catching a bull and steal his own father! He may give his harp once again to your son Phoibos, as price for the ravisher ravished. But what can I do? If only Argos were still alive, shining all over with sleepless eyes, that he might be Hera’s drover, and drag Zeus to some inaccessible pasture, and prod his flanks with a crook!’”

[344] So much for Hera. But Cronides put off his bull-faced form, and in the shape of a young man ran round the innocent girl. He touched her limbs, loosed first the bodice about the maid’s bosom, pressed as if by chance the swelling circle of the firm breast, kissed the tip of her lip, then silently undid the holy girdle of unwedded virginity, so well guarded, and plucked the fruit of love hardly ripe. Soon her womb swelled, quick with twin progeny; and Zeus the husband passed over his bride with the divine offspring in her womb, to Asterion, a consort of rich fortune. Then rising beside the Charioteer’s ankle the bridegroom Bull of Olympos sparkled with stars, he who keeps his dewloving back for the Sun in the springtime, crouching upon his hams across the path as he rises: half submerged in the sea, he shows himself holding out his right foot towards Orion, and at evening quickens his pace into the circle and passes the Charioteer who rises with him to run his course. So he was established in the heavens.

[363] But Typhoeus was no longer to hold the gear of Zeus. For now Zeus Cronides along with Archer Eros left the circling pole, and met roving Cadmos amid the mountains on his wandering search; then he devised with him an ingenious plan, and entwined the deadly threads of Moira’s spindle for Typhon. And Goatherd Pan who went with him gave Zeus Almighty cattle and sheep and rows of horned goats. Then he built a hut with mats of wattled reeds and fixed it on the ground: he put on Cadmos a shepherd’s dress, so that no one could know him in disguise, when he had clad his sham herdsman in this make-believe costume; he gave clever Cadmos the deceiving panpipes, part of the plot to pilot Typhaon to his death.

[377] Now Zeus called the counterfeit herdsman and the winged controller of generation, and disclosed this one common plan: “Look alive, Cadmos, pipe away and there shall be fine weather in heaven! Delay, and Olympos is scourged! for Typhoeus is armed with my heavenly weapons. Only the aegis-cape is left me; but what will my aegis do fighting with Typhon’s thunderbolt? I fear old Cronos may laugh aloud, I am shy of the proud neck of my lordly adversary Iapetos! I fear Hellas even more, that mother of romances – what if one of that nation call Typhon Lord of Rain, or Highest, and Ruling in the Heights, defiling my name! Become a herdsman for one day-dawn; make a tune on your mindbefooling shepherd’s pipes, and save the Shepherd of the Universe, that I may not hear the noise of Cloud-gatherer Typhoeus, the thunders of a new impostor Zeus, that I may stop his battling with lightnings and volleying with thunderbolts! If the blood of Zeus is in you, and the breed of Inachian Io, bewitch Typhon’s wits by the sovereign remedy of your guileful pipes and their tune! I will give you ample recompense for your service, two gifts: I will make you saviour of the world’s harmony, and the husband of the lady Harmonia. You also, Love, primeval founder of fecund marriage, bend your bow, and the universe is no longer adrift. If all things come from you, friendly shepherd of life, draw one shot more and save all things. As fiery god, arm yourself against Typhon, and by your help let the fiery thunderbolts return to my hand. All-vanquisher, strike one with your fire, and may your charmed shot catch one whom Cronion did not defeat; and may he have madness from the mind-bewitching tune of Cadmos, as much as I had passion for Europa’s embrace!”

[408] With these words Zeus passed away in the shape of the horned Bull, from which the Tauros Mountain takes its name. But Cadmos tuned up the deceitful notes of his harmonious reeds, as he reclined under a neighbouring tree in the pasturing woodland; wearing the country garb of a real herdsman, he sent the deluding tune to Typhaon’s ears, puffing his cheeks to blow the soft breath. The Giant loved music, and when he heard this delusive melody, he leapt up and dragged along his viperish feet; he left in a cave the flaming weapons of Zeus with Mother Earth to keep them, and followed the notes to seek the neighbouring tune of the pipes which delighted his soul. There he was seen by Cadmos near the bushes, who was sore afraid and hid in a cleft of the rock. But the monster Typhoeus with head high in air saw him trying to hide himself, and beckoned with voiceless signs, nor did he understand the trick in this beautiful music; then face to face with the shepherd, he held out one right hand, not seeing the net of destruction, and with his middle face, blood-red and human in shape, he laughed aloud and burst into empty boasts: “Why do you fear me, goatherd? Why do you cover your eyes with your hand? A fine feat I should think it to pursue a mortal man, after Cronion! A fine feat to carry off panspipes alone with the lightning! What have reeds to do with flaming thunderbolts? Keep your pipes alone, since Typhoeus possesses another kind of organ, the Olympian, which plays by itself! There sits Zeus, without his clouds, hands unrumbling, none of his usual noise – he could do with your pipes. Let him have your handful of reeds to play. I don’t join worthless reeds to other reeds in a row and wave them about, but I roll up clouds upon clouds into a lump, and discharge a bang all at once with rumblings all over the sky!

[439] “Let’s have a friendly match, if you like. Come on, you make music and sound your reedy tune, I will crash my thundery tune. You puff our your cheek all swollen with wind, and blow with your lips, but Boreas is my blower, and my thunderbolts boom when his breath flogs them. Drover, I will pay you for your pipes: for when I shall hold the sceptre instead of Zeus, and drive the heavenly throne, you shall come with me; leave the earth and I will bring you to heaven pipes and all, with your flock too if you like, you shall not be parted from your herd. I’ll settle your goats over the backbone of Aigoceros, one of the same breed; or near the Charioteer, who pushes the shining Olenian She-goat48 in Olympos with his sparkling arm. I’ll put your cattle beside the rainy Bull’s broad shoulder and make them stars rising in Olympos, or near the dewy turning-piont where Selene’s cattle send out a windy moo from their life-warming throats. You will not want your little hut. Instead of your bushes, let your flock go flashing with the ethereal Kids: I will make them another crib, to shine beside the Asses’ Crib and as good as theirs. Be a star yourself instead of a drover, where the Ox-driver is seen; wield a starry goad yourself, and drive the Bear’s Lycaonian wain. Happy shepherd, be heavenly Typhon’s guest at table: tune up on earth to-day, to-morrow in heaven! You shall have ample recompense for your song: I will establish your face in the starlit circle of heaven, and join your tuneful pipes to the heavenly Harp. If you like, I will give you Athena for your holy bride: if you do not care for Grayeyes, take Leto, or Charis, or Cythereia, or Artemis, or Hebe to wife. Only don’t ask me for my Hera’s bed. If you have a horse-master brother who can manage a team, let him take Helios’ fiery four-in-hand. If you want to wield the goatskin cape of Zeus, being a goatherd, I will make you a present of that too. I mean to march into Olympos caring nothing for Zeus unarmed; and what could Athena do to me with her armour? – a female! Srike up ‘See the Conquering Typhon comes,’ you herdsman! Sing the new lawful sovereign of Olympos in me, bearing he sceptre of Zeus and his robe of lightning!”

[481] He spoke, and Adrasteia took note of his words thus far. But when Cadmos understood that the son of Earth had been carried by Fate’s thread into his hunting-net, a willing captive, struck by the delightful sting of those soul-delighting reeds, unsmiling he uttered this artful speech: “You liked the little tune of my pipes, when you heard it; tell me, what would you do when I strike out a hymn of victory on the harp of seven strings, to honour your throne? Indeed, I matched myself against Phoibos with his heavenly quill, and beat him with my own harp, but Cronides burnt to dust my fine ringing strings with a thunderbolt, to please his beaten son! But if ever I find again the swelling sinews, I will strike up a tune with my quills to bewitch all the trees and the mountains and the temper of wild beasts. I will drag back Oceanos, that coronet self-wreathed about the earth and old as earth herself, I will make him hasten and bring his stream rolling back upon himself round the same road. I will stay the army of fixed stars, and the racing planets, and Phaëthon, and Selene’s carriage-pole. But when you strike Zeus and the gods with your thunderbolt, do leave only the Archer, that while Typhon feasts at his table, I and Phoibos may have a match, and see which will beat which in celebrating mighty Typhon! And do not kill the dancing Pierides, that they may weave the women’s lay harmonious with our manly song when Phoibos or your shepherd leads the merry dance!”

[507] He finished; and Typhoeus bowed his flashing eyebrows and shook his locks: every hair belched viper-poison and drenched the hills. Quick he returned to his cave, took up and brought out the sinews of Zeus, and gave them to crafty Cadmos as the guest’s gift; they had fallen on the ground in the battle with Typhaon. The deceitful shepherd thanked him for the immortal gift; he handled the sinews carefully, as if they were to be strung on the harp, and hid them in a hole in the rock, kept safe for Zeus Giant-slayer. Then with pursed-up lips he let out a soft and gentle breath, pressing the reeds and stealing the notes, and sounded a tune more dainty than ever. Typhoeus pricked up all his many ears and listened to the melody, and knew nothing. The Giant was bewitched, while the false shepherd whistled by his side, as if sounding the rout of the immortals with his pipes; but he was celebrating the soon-coming victory of Zeus, and singing the fate of Typhon to Typhon sitting by his side. So he excited him to frenzy even more; and as a lusty youth enamoured is bewitched by delicious thrills by the side of a maiden his agemate, and gazes now at the silvery round of her charming face, now at a straying curl of her thick hair, now again at a rosy hand, or notes the circle of her blushing breast pressed by the bodice, and watches the bare neck, as he delights to let his eye run over and over her body never satisfied, and never will leave his girl – so Typhoeus yielded his whole soul to Cadmos for the melody to charm.

NONNUS, DIONYSIACA, Book 2, translated by W. H. D. ROUSE

[1] And so Cadmos Agenorides remained there by the ankle of the pasturing woodland, drawing his lips to and fro along the tops of the pipes, as a pretended goatherd; but Zeus Cronides, unespied, uncaught, crept noiseless into the cave, and armed himself with his familiar fires a second time. And a cloud covered Cadmos beside his unseen rock, lest Typhoeus might learn this crafty plan, and the secret thief of the thunderbolts, and wise too late might kill the turncoat herdsman. But all the Giant wanted was, to hear more and more of the mind-bewitching melody with its delicious thrill. When a sailor hears the Siren’s perfidious song, and bewitched by the melody, he is dragged to a self-chosen fate too soon; no longer he cleaves the waves, no longer he whitens the blue water with his oars unwetted now, but falling into the net of melodious Fate, he forgets to steer, quite happy, caring not for the seven starry Pleiades and the Bear’s circling course: so the monster, shaken by the breath of that deceitful tune, welcomed with delight the wound of the pipes which was his escort to death.

[20] But now the shepherd’s reed breathing melody fell silent, and a mantling shadow of cloud his the piper as he cut off his tune. Typhoeus rushed head-in-air with the fury of battle into the cave’s recesses, and searched with hurried madness for the wind-coursing thunderbolt and the lightning unapproachable; with inquiring foot he chased the fire-shotten gleam of the stolen thunderbolt, and found an empty cave! Too late he learnt the craft-devising schemes of Cronides and the subtle machinations of Cadmos: flinging the rocks about he leapt upon Olympos. While he dragged his crooked track with snaky foot, he spat out showers of poison from his throat; the mountain torrents were swollen, as the monster showered fountains from the viperfish bristles of his high head; as he marched, the solid earth did sink, and the steady ground of Cilicia shook to its foundations under those dragon-feet; the flanks of craggy Tauros crashed with a rumbling din, until the neighbouring Pamphylian hills danced with fear; the underground caverns boomed, the rocky headlands trembled, the hidden places shook, the shore slipt away as a thrust of his earthshaking foot loosened the sands.

[42] Neither pasture nor wild beasts were spared. Rawravening bears made a meal for the jaws of Typhaon’s bear-heads; tawny bodies of chest-bristling lions were swallowed by the gaping jaws of his own lion-heads; his snaky throats devoured the cold shapes of earthfed serpents; birds of the air, flying through untrodden space, there met neighbours to gulp them down their throats – he found the eagle in his home, and that was the food he relished most, because it is called the Bird of Zeus. He ate up the plowing ox, and had no pity when he saw the galled neck bloody from the yoke-straps. He made the rivers dust, as he drank the water after his meal, beating off the troops of Naiads from the river-beds: the Naiad of the deeps made her way tripping afoot as if the river were a roadway, until she stood, unshod, with dry limbs, she a nymph, the creature of watery ways, and as the girl struggled, thrusting one foot after another along the thirsty bed of the stream, she found her knees held fast to the bottom in a muddy prison.

[60] The old shepherd, terrified to descry the manifold visage of this maddened monster, dropt his pipes and ran away; the goatherd, seeing the wide-scattered host of his arms, threw his reed flying to the winds; the hard-working plowman sprinkled not the new-scored ground with corn thrown behind him, nor covered it with earth, nor cut with earthshaking iron the land furrowed already by Typhon’s guiding hand, but let his oxen go loose. The earth’s hollows were bared, as the monster’s missile cleft it. He freed the liquid vein, and as the chasm opened, the lower channel bubbled up with flooding springs, pouring out the water from under the uncovered bosom of the ground, and rocks were thrown up, and falling from the air in torrential showers were hidden in the sea, making the waters dry land: and the hurtling masses of earth rooted themselves firmly as the footings of new-made islands. Trees were levered up from the earth by the roots, and the fruit fell on the ground untimely; the fresh-flowering garden was laid waste, the rosy meadows withered; the West Wind was beaten by the dry leaves of whirling cypresses. Phoibos sang a dirge in lamentable tones for his devastated iris, twining a sorrowful song, and lamented far more bitterly than for his clusters of Amyclean flowers, when the laurel by his side was struck. Pan in anguish uplifted his fallen pine; Grayeyes, remembering Moria, groaned over her broken olive-tree, the Attic nymph who brought her a city. The Paphian also wept when her anemone was laid in the dust, and mourned long over the fragrant tresses of flowercups from her rosebed laid in the dust, while she tore her soft hair. Deo mourned over the half-grown corn destroyed and no longer celebrated the harvest home. The Hadryad nymphs lamented the lost shade of their yearsmate trees.

[94] One Hamadryad leapt unveiled from the cloven shaft of a bushy laurel, which had grown with her growth, and another maiden stepping out of her pine-tree appeared beside her neighbour the exiled nymph, and said: “Laurel Hamadryad, so shy of the marriage bed, let us both take one road, lest you see Phoibos, lest I espy Pan! Woodmen, pass by these trees! Do not fell the afflicted bush of unhappy Daphne! Shipwright, spare me! cut no timbers from my pine-tree, to make some lugger that may feel the billows of Aphrodite, Lady of the Sea! Yes, woodcutter, grant me this last grace: strike me with your axe instead of my clusters, and drive our unmarried Athena’s chaste bronze through my breast, that I may die before I wed, and go to Hades a virgin, still a stranger to Eros, like Pitys and like Daphne!” With these words, she contrived a makeshift kirtle with the leaves, and modestly covered the circle of her breast with this green girdle, pressing thigh upon thigh. The other seeing her so downcast, answered thus: “I feel the fear inborn in a maiden, because I was born of a laurel, and I am pursued like Daphne. But where shall I flee? Shall I hide under a rock? No, thunderbolts have burnt to ashes the mountains hurled at Olympos; and I tremble at your lustful Pan, who will persecute me like Pitys, like Syrinx – I shall be chased myself until I become another Echo, to scour the hills and second another’s speech. I will haunt these clusters no longer; I will leave my tree and live in the mountains which are still half to be seen, where Artemis also hunts, and she loves a maiden. – Yet Cronion won the bed of Callisto by taking the form of Artemis! I will plunge into the briny deep – what is marriage to me? – Yet in the sea, Earthshaker chased Asterië in the madness of his passion. O that I had wings to fly! I will traverse the heights, and take the road which the winds of the air do travel! But perhaps racing wings are also useless: Typhoeus reaches the clouds with highclambering hands!

[130] “But if he will force me by violence, I will change my shape, I will mingle with the birds; flitting as Philomela, I will be the swallow dear to Zephyros in spring-time, harbinger of roses and flowery dew, prattling bird that sings a sweet song under the tiles, dashing about her nest with dancing wings. And, you, Procne, after your bitter sufferings, – you may weep for your son with mournful notes, and I will groan for my bridal. – Lord Zeus! make me no swallow, or angry Tereus on the wing may chase me, like Typhoeus! Air, mountain, sea, I may tread none of them: I will hide me deep in the earth. No! the water-snakes of the monster’s viperfish feet crawl into the caverns underground, spitting poison! May I be a fountain of water in the country, like Comaitho, mingling her newly flowing water with her father Cydnos – no, not to suit the story, because I shall then have to join my virgin water with the out-gushings of a lovesick maid. But where shall I flee? Shall I mingle with Typhon? Then shall I bear a son like the father – an alien, multiform! Let me be another tree, and pass from tree to tree keeping the name of a virtuous maid; may I never, instead of laurel, be called that unhallowed plant which gave its name to Myrrha. Yes, I beseech thee! let me be one of the Heliades beside the stream of mourning Eridanos: often will I drop amber from my eyelids; I will spread my leaves to entwine with the dirge-loving clusters of my neighbouring poplar, bewailing my maidenhood with abundant tears – for Phaëthon will not be my lament. Forgive me, my laurel; I shrink from being another tree after the tree of my former wood. I also will be a stone, like Niobe, that wayfarers may pity me too, a groaning stone. – But why be the shape of one with that ill-omened tongue? Be gracious, Leto! Perish the god-defiant name of a nymph unhappy to be a mother!”

[163] While she spoke, Phaëthon had left he rounded sky, and turned his car towards setting: silent Night leapt up from earth into the air like a high-stretching cone, and wrapped heaven about in a starry robe spangling the welkin. The immortals moved about the cloudless Nile, but Zeus Cronides on the brows of Tauros awaited the light of toil-awakening Dawn. It was night. Sentinels stood in line around Olympos and the seven zones, and as it were from the summit of towers came their nightly alarms; the calls of the stars in many tongues were carried all abroad, and the moon’s turning-mark received the creaking echo from Saturn’s starting-point. Now the Seasons, guardians of the upper air, handmaids of Phaëthon, had fortified the sky with a long string of covering clouds like a coronal. The stars had closed the Atlantean bar of the inviolable gates, lest some stealthy troop should enter the heavens while the Blessed ones were away: instead of the noise of pipes and the familiar flute, the breezes whistled a tune with their wings through the night. Old Oxherd was on guard with unsleeping eyes, in company with the heavenly Serpent of the Arcadian Bear, looking out from on high for some nightly assault of Typhon: the Morning Star watched the east, the Evening Star the west, and Cepheus, leaving the southern gates to the Archer, himself patrolled the rainy gates of the north.

[188] Watchfires were all around: for the blazing flames of the stars, and the nightly lamp of unresting Selene, sparkled like torches. Often the shooting stars, leaping through the heights of Olympos with windswept whirl from the ether, scored the air with flame on Cronion’s right hand; often the lightning danced, twisting about like a tumbler, and tearing the clouds as it shot through, the uncertain brilliance which runs to and fro, now hidden, now shining, in alternating swing; and the comet twined in clusters the long strands of his woven flame, and made a ragged light with his hairy fire. Stray meteors were also shining, like long rafters stretching across the sky, shooting their long fires as allies of Zeus; and the rain’s comrade, the bow of Iris, wove her many colours into a rounded track, and shone bent under the light-shafts of Phaëthon opposite, mingling pale with dark, and light with rosy.

[205] Zeus was alone, when Victory came to comfort him, scoring the high paths of the air with her shoe. She had the form of Leto; and while she armed her father, she made him a speech full of reproaches, with guileful lips: “Lord Zeus! stand up as champion of your own children! Let me never see Athena mingled with Typhon, she who knows not the way of a man with a maid! Make not a mother of the unmothered! Fight, brandish your lightning, the fiery spear of Olympos! Gather once more your clouds, lord of the rain! For the foundations of the steadfast universe are already shaking under Typhon’s hands: the four blended elements are melted! Deo has renounced her harvests. Hebe has left her cup, Ares has thrown down his spear, Hermes has dropped his staff, Apollo has cast away his harp, and taken a swan’s form, and flown off on the wing, leaving his winged arrows behind! Aphrodite, the goddess who brings wedlock to pass, has gone a-wandering, and the universe is without seed. The bonds indissoluble of harmony are dissolved: for bold Eros has flown in panic, leaving behind his generative arrows, he the adorner of brides, he the all-mastering, the unmastered! And your fiery Hephaistos has left his favourite Lemnos, and dragging unruly knees, look how slow he keeps his unsteady course! See a great miracle – I pity your Hera, though she hates me sure enough! What – is your begetter to come back into the assembly of the stars? May that never be, I pray! Even if I am called a Titaness, I wish to see no Titans lords of Olympos, but you and your children. Take your lordly thunderbolt and champion chaste Artemis. What – do I keep my maiden for a bridegroom who offers no gifts but only violence? What – is the dispenser of childbirth to see childbirth of her own? Will she stretch out her hands to me, and then what gracious Eileithyia shall I call for the Archeress, when Eileithyia herself is in childbed?”

[237] So she spoke: and Sleep beating his shady wing sent all breathing nature to rest; but Cronion alone remained sleepless. Typhoeus stretched out his sluggish back and lay heavy upon his bed, covering his Mother Earth; she opened wide her bosom, and lurking lairs were hollowed out in a grinning chasm for the snaky heads which sank into the ground. The sun appeared, and many-armed Typhoeus roared for the fray with all the tongues of all his throats, challenging mighty Zeus. That sonorous voice reached where the root-fixt bed of refluent Oceanos surrounds the circle of the world and its four divided parts, girdling the whole earth coronet-wise with encircling band; as the monster spoke, that which answered the army of his voices, was not one concordant echo, but a babel of screaming sounds: when the monster arrayed him with all his manifold shapes, out rang the yowling of wolves, the roaring of lions, the grunting of boars, the lowing of cattle, the hissing of serpents, the bold yap of leopards, the jaws of rearing bears, the fury of dogs. Then with his midmost man-shaped head the Giant yelled out threats against Zeus”

[258] “Smash the house of Zeus, O my hands! Shake the foundation of the universe, and the blessed ones with it! Break the bar of Olympos, self-turning, divine! Drag down to earth the heavenly pillar, let Atlas be shaken and flee away, let him throw down the starry vault of Olympos and fear no more its circling course – for I will not permit a son of Earth to be bowed down with chafed shoulders, while he under-props the revolving compulsion of the sky! No, let him leave his endless burden to the other gods, and battle against the Blessed Ones! Let him break off rocks, and volley with those hard shots the starry vault which he once carried! Let the timid Seasons, the Sun’s handmaids, flee the heavens under the shower of mountains! Mix earth with sky, water with fire, sea with Olympos, in a litter of confusion! “I will compel the four winds also to labour as my slaves; I lash the North Wind, I buffet the South, I flog the East; I will thrash the West, with one hand30 I will mix night with day; Oceanos my brother shall bring his water to Olympos aloft with many-fountained throat, and rising above the five parallel circles he shall inundate the stars; then let the thirsty31 Bear go wandering in the water with the Waggon’s pole submerged!

[281] “Bellow, my bulls, shake the circle of the equator in the sky, break with your notched horns the horns of the fiery Bull, your own likeness! Let Selene’s cattle change their watery road, fearing the heavybooming bellow of my heads! Let Typhaon’s bear open wide his grim gaping jaws, and worry the Bear of Olympos! Let my lion face the heavenly Lion, and drive him reluctant from the path of the Zodiac! (Little do I care for Zeus,) with only a few lightning to arm him! Ah, but my swords are the maddened waves of the sea, the tors of the land, the island glens; my shields are the hills, the cliffs are my breastplates unbreakable, my halberds are the rocks, and the rivers which will quench the contemptible thunderbolt. I will keep the chains of Iapetos for Poseidon; and soaring round Caucasos, another and better eagle shall tear the bleeding liver, growing for ever anew, of Hephaistos the fiery: since fire was that for which Prometheus has been suffering the ravages of his self-growing liver. I will take a shape the counterpart of the sons of Iphimedeia, and I will shut up the intriguing son of Maia in a brazen jar, ‘Hermes freed Ares from prison, and he was put in prison himself!’ Let Artemis break the untouched seal of her maidenhood, and become the enforced consort of Orion; Leto shall spread her old bedding for Tityos, dragged to wedlock by force. I will strip murderous Ares of his ragged bucklers, I will bind the lord of battle, and carry him off, and make him Killer the Gentle; I will carry off Pallas and join her to Ephialtes, married at last; that I may see Ares a slave, and Athena a mother.

[314] “Cronion also shall lift the spinning heavens of Atlas, and bear the load on weary shoulders – there shall he stand, and hear the song at my wedding, and hide his jealousy when I shall be Hera’s bridegroom. Torches shall not lack at my wedding. Bright lightning shall come of itself to be selfmade torch of the bride-chamber; Phaëthon himself instead of pine-brands, kindled at the light of his own flames, shall put his radiance at the service of Typhoeus the Bridegroom; the stars shall sprinkle their bridal sparks over Olympos as lamps to my loves, the stars, lights of evening! My servant Selene, Endymion’s bed-fellow, along with Aphrodite the friend of marriage, shall lay my bed; and if I want a bath, I will bathe in the waters of starry Eridanos. Come now, ye circling Seasons! You prepared the bed of Zeus, build now the bower of love for Typhoeus; you also, Leto, Athenaia, Paphian, Charis, Artemis, Hebe, bring up form Oceanos his kindred water for Typhon the Bridegroom! And at the banquet of my table, with bridal quill Apollo my menial shall celebrate Typhoeus instead of Zeus.

[334] “I long for no stranger’s demesne; for Uranos is my brother, a son of Earth like myself; the star-dappled heaven which I shall rule, the ehaven which I shall live in, comes to me through my mother. And cannibal Cronos I will drag up once more to the light, another brother, to help me in my task, out of the underground abyss; I will break those constraining chains, and bring back the Titans to heaven, and settle under the same roof in the sky the Cyclopes, sons of Earth. I will make more weapons of fire; for I need many thunderbolts, because I have two hundred hands to fight with, not only a pair like Cronides. I will forge a newer and better brand of lightning, with more fire and flashes. I will build another heaven up aloft, he eighth, broader and higher than the rest, and furnish it with brighter stars; for the vault which we see close beside us is not enough to cover the whole of Typhon. And after those girl children and the male progeny of prolific Zeus, I will beget another multiparous generation of new Blessed Ones with multitudinous necks. I will not leave the company of the stars useless and unwedded, but I will join male to female, that the winged Virgin may sleep with the Oxherd and breed me slave-children.” So he shouted; Cronides heard, and laughed aloud. Then the din of battle resounded on both sides. Strife was Typhon’s escort in the mellay, Victory led Zeus into battle. No herds of cattle were the cause of that struggle, no flocks of sheep, this was no quarrel for a beautiful woman, no fray for a petty town: heaven itself was the stake in the fight, the sceptre and throne of Zeus lay on the knees of Victory as the prize of combat.

[364] Zeus flogging the clouds beat a thundering roar in the sky and trumpeted Enyo’s call, then fitted clouds upon his chest in a bunch as protection against the Giant’s missiles. Nor was Typhoeus silent: his bull-heads were self-sounding trumpets for him, sending forth a bellow which made Olympos rattle again; his serpents intermingled whistling for Ares’ pipes. He fortified the ranks of his high-clambering limbs, shielding mighty rock with rock until the cliffs made an unbroken wall of battlements, as he set crag by crag uprooted in a long line. It looked like an army preparing for battle; for side by side bluff pressed hard on bluff, tor upon tor, ledge upon ledge, and high in the clouds one tortuous ridge pushed another; rugged hills were Typhon’s helmets, and his heads were hidden in their beetling steeps. In that battle, the Giant had indeed one body, but many necks, but legions of arms innumerable, lions’ jaws with well-sharpened fangs, hairbrush of vipers mounting over the stars. Trees were doubled up by Typhaon’s hands and thrown against Cronides, and other fine leafy growths of earth, but all these Zeus unwilling burnt to dust with one spark of thunderbolt cast in heavy throw. Many an elm was hurled against Zeus with first coeval, and enormous plane-trees and volleys of white poplar; many a pit was broken in earth’s flank.

[391] The whole circuit of the universe with its four sides was buffeted. The four winds, allied with Cronion, raised in the air columns of sombre dust; they swelled the arching waves, they flogged the sea until Sicily quaked; the Pelorid shores resounded and the ridges of Aitna, the Lilybaian rocks bellowed prophetic of things to come, the Pachynian promontory crashed under the western wave. Near the Bear, the nymph of Athos wailed about her Thracian glen, the forest of Macedon roared on the Pierian ridge; the foundations of the east were shaken, there was crashing in the fragrant valleys of Assyrian Libanos. Aye, and from Typhaon’s hands were showered volleys against the unwearied thunderbolts of Zeus. Some shots went past Selene’s car, and scored through the invisible footprints of her moving bulls; others whirling through the air with sharp whiz, the winds blew away by counterblasts. Many a stray shot from the invulnerable thunderbolts of Zeus fell into the welcoming hand of Poseidon, unsparing of his earthpiercing trident’s point; old Nereus brought the brine-soaked bolts to the ford of the Cronian Sea, and dedicated them as an offering to Zeus.

[414] Now Zeus armed the two grim sons of Enyalios, his own grandsons, Rout and Terror his servant, the inseparable guardsmen of the sky: Rout he set up with lightning, Terror he made strong with the thunderbolt, terrifying Typhon. Victory lifted her shield and held it before Zeus: Enyo countered with a shout, and Ares made a din. Zeus breasting the tempests with his aegis-breastplate swooped down from the air on high, seated in Time’s chariot with four winged steeds, for the horses that drew Cronion were the team of the winds. Now he battled with lightnings, now with Levin; now he attacked with thunders, now poured out petrified masses of frozen hail in volleying showers. Waterspouts burst thick upon the Giant’s heads with sharp blows, and hands were cut off from the monster by the frozen volleys of the air as by a knife. One hand rolled in the dust, struck off by the icy cut of the hail; it did not drop the crag which it held, but fought on even while it fell, and shot rolling over the ground in self-propelled leaps, a hand gone mad! as if it still wished to strike the vault of Olympos. Then the sovereign of the heavens brandished aloft his fiery bolt, and passing from the left wing of the battle to the right, fought manifest on high. The many-armed monster hastened to the watery torrents; he intertwined his row of fingers into a living mat, and hollowing his capacious palms, he lifted from the midst of the wintry rivers their water as it came pouring down from the mountains, and threw these detached parcels of he streams against the lightning. But the ethereal flame blazed with livelier sparks through the water of the torrents which struck it; the thirsty water boiled and steamed, and its liquid essence dried up in the red hot mass. Yes – to quench the ethereal fire was the bold Giant’s plan, poor fool! he knew not that the fire-flaming thunderbolts and lightnings are the offspring of the clouds from whence the rain-showers come!

[451] Again, he cut straight off sections of the torrent-beds, and designed to crush the breast of Zeus which no iron can wound; the mass of rock came hurtling at Zeus, but Zeus blew a light puff from the edge of his lips, and that gentle breath turned the whirling rock aside with all its towering crags. The monster with his hand broke off a rounded promontory from an island, and rising for the attack circled it round his head again and again, and cast it at the invincible face of Zeus; then Zeus moved his head aside, and dodged the jagged rock which came at him; but Typhon hit the lightning as it passed on its hot zigzag path, and at once the rock was white-patched at the tip and blackened with smoke – there was no mistake about it. A third rock he cast; but Cronion caught it in full career with the flat of his infinite open hand, and by a playful turn of the wrist sent it back like a bouncing ball, to Typhon. The crag returned with many an airy twist along its homeward path, and of itself shot the shooter. A fourth shot he sent, higher than before: the rock touched the tassel-tips of the aegis-cape, and split asunder. Another he let fly: storm-swift the rock flew, but a thunderbolt struck it, and half-consumed, it blazed. The crags could not pierce the raincloud; but the stricken hills were broken to pieces by the rainclouds.

[475] Thus impartial Enyo held equal balance between the two sides, between Zeus and Typhon, while the thunderbolts with booming shots held revel like dancers of the sky. Cronides fought fully armed: in the fray, the thunder was his shield, the cloud his breastplate, he cast the lightning for a spear; Zeus let fly his thunderbolts from the air, his arrows barbed with fire. For already from the underground abyss a dry vapour diffused around rose from the earth on high, and compressed within the cloud was stifled in the fiery gullet, heating the pregnant cloud. For the lurking flame curshed within rushed about struggling to find a passage through; over the smoke the fire-breeding clouds rumble in their agony seeking the middle path; the fires dares not go upwards: for the lightning leaping up is kept back by the moist air bathed in rainy drops, which condenses the seething cloud above, but the lower part is parched and gapes and the fire runs through with a bound. As the female stone is struck by the male stone, one stone on another brings flame to birth, while crushed and beaten it produces from itself a shower of sparks: so the heavenly fire is kindled in clouds and murk crushed and beaten, but from earthy smoke, which is naturally thin, the winds are brought forth. There is another floating vapour, drawn from the waters, which the sun shining full on them with fiery rays milks out and draws up dewy through the boiling track of air. This thickens and produces the cloudy veil; then shaking the thick mass by means of the thinner vapour, it dissolves the fine cloud again into a fall of rain, and returns to its natural condition of water. Such is the character of the fiery clouds, with their twin birth of lightnings and thunders together.

[508] Zeus the father fought on: raised and hurled his familiar fire against his adversary, piercing his lions, and sending a fiery whirlwind from heaven to strike the battalion of his innumerable necks with their babel of tongues. Zeus cast his bolt, one blaze burnt the monster’s endless hands, one blaze consumed his numberless shoulders and the speckled tribes of his serpents; heaven’s blades cut off those countless heads; a writhing comet met him front to front discharging a thick bush of sparks, and consumed the monster’s hair. Typhon’s heads were ablaze, the hair caught fire; with heaven’s sparks silence sealed the hissing tresses, the serpents shrivelled up, and in their throats the poison-spitting drops were dried. The Giant fought on: his eyes were burnt to ashes in the murky smoke, his cheeks were whitened with hoar-frost, his faces beaten with showers of snow. He suffered the fourfold compulsion of the four winds. For if he turned flickering eyes to the sunrise, he received the fiery battle of neighbouring Euros. If he gazed towards the stormy clime of the Arcadian Bear, he was beaten by the chilly frost of wintry whirlwinds. If he shunned the cold blast of snow-beaten Boreas, he was shaken by the volleys of wet and hot together. If he looked to the sunset, opposite to the dawn of the grim east, he shivered before Enyo and her western tempests when he heard the noise of Zephyros cracking his spring-time lash; and Notos, that hot wind, round about the southern foot of Capricorn flogged the aerial vaults, leading against Typhon a glowing blaze with steamy heat. If again Rainy Zeus poured down a watery torrent, Typhoeus bathed all his body in the trouble-soothing showers, and refreshed his benumbed limbs after the stifling thunderbolts.

[540] Now as the son was scourged with frozen volleys of jagged hailstones, his mother the dry Earth was beaten too; and seeing the stone bullets and icy points embedded in the Giant’s flesh, the witness of his fate, she prayed to Titan Helios with submissive voice: she begged of him one red hot ray, that with its heating fire she might melt the petrified water of Zeus, by pouring his kindred radiance over frozen Typhon. She herself melted along with his bruised body; and when she saw his legion of highclambering hands burnt all round, she besought one of the tempestuous winter’s blasts to come for one morning, that he might quench Typhon’s overpowering thirst by his cool breezes. Then Cronion inclined the equally balanced beam of the fight. But Earth his Mother had thrown off her veil of forests with her hand, and just then was grieving to behold Typhaon’s smoking heads. While his faces were shrivelling, the Giant’s knees gave way beneath him; the trumpet of Zeus brayed, foretelling victory with a roll of thunder; down fell Typhoeus’s high-uplifted frame, drunk with the fiery bolt from heaven, stricken with a war-wound of something more than steel, and lay with his back upon Earth his mother, stretching his snaky limbs in the dust and belching flame. Cronides laughed aloud, and taunted him like this in a flood of words from his mocking throat:

[565] “A fine ally has old Cronos found in you, Typhoeus! Earth could scarcely bring forth that great son for Iapetos! A jolly champion of Titans! The thunderbolts of Zeus soon lost their power against you, as I see! How long are you going to wait before taking up your quarters in the inaccessible heavens, you sceptred impostor? The throne of Olympos awaits you: accept the robes and sceptre of Zeus, God-defying Typhoeus! Bring back Astraios to heaven; if you wish, let Eurynome and Ophion return to the sky, and Cronos in the train of that pair! When you enter the dappleback vault of highranging stars, let crafty Prometheus leave his chains, and come with you; the bold bird who makes hearty meals off that rejuvenescent liver shall show him the way to heaven. What did you want to gain by your riot, but to see Zeus and Earthshaker footmen behind your throne? Well, here you have Zeus helpless, no longer sceptre-bearer of Olympos, Zeus stript of his thunders and his clouds, holding up no longer the lightning’s fire divine or the familiar thunderbolt, but a torch for Typhaon’s bower, groom of the chamber of Hera the bride of your spear, whom he eyes with wrath, jealous of your bed: here you have Earthshaker with him, torn from the sea for a new place instead of the deep as waiter at your table, no trident in his hand but a cup for you if you are thirsty! Here you have Ares for a menial, Apollo is your lackey! Send round Maia’s son, King’s Messenger, to announce to the Titans your triumph and your glory in the skies. But leave your smith Hephaistos to his regular work in Lemnos, and he can make a necklace to adorn your newly wedded bride, a real work of art, in dazzling colours, or a fine pair of brilliant shoes for your wife’s feet to delight her, or he can build another Olympian throne of shining gold, that your golden-throned Hera may laugh because she has a better throne than yours! And when you have the underground Cyclopes domiciled in Olympos, make anew spark for an improved thunderbolt. As for Eros, who bewitched your mind by delusive hopes of victory, chain him with golden Aphrodite in chains of gold, and clamp with chains of bronze Ares the governor of iron!

[605] “The lightnings try to escape, and will not abide Enyo! How as it you could not escape a harmless little flash of lightning? How was it with all those innumerable ears you were afraid to hear a little rainy thud of thunder? Who made you so big a coward? Where are your weapons? Where are your puppyheads? Where are those gaping lions, where is the heavy bellowing of your throats like rumbling earthquake? Where is the far-flung poison of your snaky mane? Do not you hiss any more with that coronet of serpentine bristles? Where are the bellowings of your bull-mouths? Where are your hands and their volleys of precipitous crags? Do you flog no longer the mazy circles of the stars? Do the jutting tusk of your boars no longer whiten their chins, wet with a frill of foamy drippings? Come now, where are the bristling grinning jaws of the mad bear? “Son of Earth, give place to the sons of heaven! For I with one hand have vanquished your hands, two hundred strong. Let three-headland Sicily receive Typhon whole and entire, let her crush him all about under her steep and lofty hills, with the hair of his hundred heads miserably bedabbled in dust. Nevertheless, if you did have an over-violent mind, if you did assault Olympos itself in your impracticable ambitions, I will build you a cenotaph, presumptuous wretch, and I will engrave on your empty tomb, this last message: ‘This is the barrow of Typhoeus son of Earth, who once lashed the sky with stones, and the fire of heaven burnt him up.’”

[631] Thus he mocked the half-living corpse of the son of Earth. Then Cilician Tauros brayed a victorious noise on his stony trumpet for Zeus Almighty, while Cydnos danced zigzag on his watery feet, crying Euoi! in rolling roar for the victory of Zeus, Cydnos visible in the midst, as he poured the flood upon Tarsos which had been there ever since he had been there himself. But Earth tore her rocky tunic and lay there grieving; instead of the shears of mourning, she let the winds beat her breast and shear off a coppice for a curl; so she cut the tresses from her forest-covered head as in the month of leaf-shedding, she tore gullies in her cheeks; Earth wailed, as her river-tears rolled echoing through the swollen torrents of the hills. The gales eddying from Typhaon’s limbs lash the waves, hurrying to engulf the ships and riding down the sheltered calm. Not only the surges they invade; but often over the land sweeps a storm of dust, and overwhelms the crops growing firm and upright upon the fields. Then Nature, who governs the universe and recreates its substance, closed up the gaping rents in earth’s broken surface, and sealed once more with the bond of indivisible joinery those island cliffs which had been rent from their beds. No longer was there turmoil among the stars. For Helios replaced the maned Lion, who had moved out of the path of the Zodiac, beside the Maiden who holds the corn-ear; Selene took the crab, now crawling over the forehead of the heavenly Lion, and drew him back opposite cold Capricorn, and fixt him there.

[660] But Zeus Cronides did not forget Cadmos the mastersinger. He dispersed the cloud of darkness which overshadowed him, and calling him, spoke in this fashion: “Cadmos, you have crowned the gates of Olympos with your pipes! Then I will myself celebrate your bridal with heaven’s own Harp. I will make you goodson to Ares and Cythereia; gods shall be guests at your wedding-feast on the earth! I will visit your house: what more could you want, than to see the King of the Blessed touching your table? And if you wish to cross life’s ferry on a calm sea, escaping the uncertain currents of Chance, be careful always not to offend Ares Dircaian, Ares angry when deprived of his brood. At dead of night fix your gaze on the heavenly Serpent, and do sacrifice on the altar holding in your hand a piece of fragrant serpentine; and calling upon the Olympian Serpent-holder, burn in the fire a horn of the Illyrian deer with many tines: that so you may escape all the bitter things which the wreathed spindle of apportioned Necessity has spun for your fate, - if the threads of the Portioners every obey!

[679] “Let pass the memory of your angry father Agenor, fear not for your wandering brothers; for they all live, though far apart. Cepheus journeyed to the regions of the south, and he has found favour with the Cephenes of Ethiopia; Thasos went to Thasos, and Cilix is king over the Cilicians round about the snowy mount of high-peaked Tauros; Pineus came with all speed to the Thracian land. As for him, I will make him proud with his deep mines of riches, and lead him as goodson to Oreithyia and Thracian Boreas, as prophetic bridegroom of garlanded Cleopatra. For you, the Portioner’s thread weighs equal with your brothers; be king of the Cadmeians, and leave your name to your people. Give up the back-wending circuits of your wandering way, and relinquish the bull’s restless track; for your sister has been wedded by the law of love to Asterion of Dicte, king of Corybantian Ida.

[696] “So much I will myself foretell for you, the rest I will leave to Phoibos. And now, Cadmos, do you make your way to the midnipple of the earth, and visit the speaking vales of Pytho.” With these words, Zeus Cronides dismissed Agenor’s son, and swiftly turned his golden chariot toward the round of the ethereal stars, while Victory by his side drove her father’s team with the heavenly whip. So the god came once more to the sky; and to receive him the stately Seasons threw open the heavenly gates, and crowned the heavens. With Zeus victorious, the other gods came home to Olympos, in their own form come again, for they put off the winged shapes which they had taken on. Athena came into heaven unarmed, in dainty robes with Ares turned Comus, and Victory for Song; and Themis displayed to dumbfounded Earth, mother of the giants, the spoils of the giant destroyed, an awful warning for the future, and hung them up high in the vestibule of Olympos.

OVID, METAMORPHOSES, Book 5, translated BROOKES MORE

[315] Twas shameful to contend; it seemed more shameful to submit. At once, the chosen Nymphs swore justice by their streams, and sat in judgment on their thrones of rock. At once, although the lot had not been cast, the leading sister hastened to begin.—She chanted of celestial wars; she gave the Giants false renown; she gave the Gods small credit for great deeds.—She droned out, `Forth, those deepest realms of earth, Typhoeus came, and filled the Gods with fear. They turned their backs in flight to Egypt; and the wearied rout, where Great Nile spreads his seven-channeled mouth, were there received. – Thither the earth-begot Typhoeus hastened: but the Gods of Heaven deceptive shapes assumed.—Lo, Jupiter, (As Libyan Ammon's crooked horns attest) was hidden in the leader of a flock; Apollo in a crow; Bacchus in a goat; Diana in a cat; Venus in a fish; Saturnian Juno in a snow-white cow; Cyllenian Hermes in an Ibis' wings.

VALERIUS FLACCUS, ARGONAUTICA, Book 4, translated H. R. FAIRCLOUGH

[229] Not otherwise did Typhoeus, boasting that already the kingdom of the sky and already the stars were won, feel aggrieved that Bacchus in the van and Pallas, foremost of the gods, and a maiden’s snakes confronted him.

[422] His tale was done; and clam winds were making the canvas fill. The morrow’s dawn showed to the Minyae that the night’s journey had not been vain; all that they see is new – the Thynian shores near-by aghast at the fate of prophetic Phineus, oppressed at his life’s close by the gods’ stern might. For not only is he a stranger from his land, not only blind, but moreover the Harpies, daughters of Typhoeus, ministers of the Thunderer’s wrath, do ravage him, thieving his food from his very mouth.

[514] Here while they hovered, weary and panting with fear of death’s approach, and weighed down in low and timorous flight implored with ghastly shriek their father Typho, he rose and brought up the darkness with him, mingling high and low, while from the heart of the gloom a voice was heard: “It is enough to have chase the goddesses so far; why strive ye farther in rage against the ministers of Jove, whom, though he wield the thunderbolt and the aegis, he has chosen to work his mighty wrath? Now also hath that same Jove commanded them to depart from the dwellings of Agenor’s son; they hearken to his prompting, and withdraw upon his word. Yet anon will ye also in like manner flee, when the fatal bow shall bring doom upon you. Never shall the Harpies lack sustenance, so long as mortals shall merit the anger of the gods.

VALERIUS FLACCUS, ARGONAUTICA, Book 6, translated H. R. FAIRCLOUGH

[163] Boreas drives not so many billows from ocean’s bounds, nor so answers his brothers from opposing waves: not so loud is the clamour of birds about the rivers, as is then the blare of trumpets that ascends to heaven, filling with frenzy the mingled myriads, numerous as leaves or flowers in the opening year. The plain itself groans beneath the beat of wheels, and the ground trembles and quakes at the shock, as when Jupiter strikes Phlegra with his angry brand and hurls back Typhon to the deepest recesses of the earth.

VIRGIL, GEORGICS, translated H. R. FAIRCLOUGH

[276] The Moon herself has ordained various days in various grades as lucky for work. Shun the fifth; then pale Orcus and the Furies were born; then in monstrous labour Earth bore Coeus, and Iapetus and fierce Typhoeus, and the brethren who were banded to break down Heaven. Thrice did they essay to pile Ossa on Pelion, and over Ossa to roll leafy Olympus; thrice, with his bolt, the Father dashed apart their up-piled mountains.