Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

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. Zeus, however, 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, wrested 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 in the Corycian cave. Likewise he put away the sinews there, hidden in a bearskin, and set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, a half-bestial maiden. But Hermes and Aegipan stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus. Having recovered his strength, Zeus suddenly came 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: he tasted of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby. 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 (“Bloody”). When he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him—a huge mountain from which, they say, blasts of fire issue down to this day from the thunderbolts that were thrown. This version diverges sharply from Hesiod: animal metamorphoses and flight to Egypt; temporary maiming of Zeus; Corycian cave and Delphyne; Hermes and Aegipan; Fates’ trick at Nysa; geographic chase through Syria, Thrace, and Sicily; final burial under Etna rather than a simple cast into Tartarus.