Source Verification: Echidna
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
What did Echidna look like?
Hesiod describes her as half a nymph, with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half an enormous, speckled serpent, living on raw flesh inside a hollow cave. He calls her ageless and immortal, unlike ordinary mortal or even most divine beings, by the gods' own design.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 295-305
Who were Echidna's children?
With Typhon, Hesiod names Orthus, Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra, and the Chimera. In the same passage, through a further union with her own son Orthus, Echidna is also named as the mother of the Sphinx and the Nemean lion, making her the source of nearly every major Greek monster.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 306-332
Was Echidna immortal?
According to Hesiod, yes - he calls her ageless and immortal for all her days. Apollodorus tells a different story, however, describing the giant Argus Panoptes catching her asleep and killing her, a detail that flatly contradicts Hesiod's description and appears nowhere in the Theogony.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 305
Who killed Echidna?
Only Apollodorus answers this question at all, crediting the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes with catching Echidna asleep and killing her after she had spent years carrying off travelers. Hesiod's Theogony, by contrast, calls her immortal and never describes her death.
Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.1.2
Who were Echidna's own parents?
Hesiod makes her the daughter of Chrysaor and the Oceanid Callirhoe, a full sister of the three-bodied Geryon. Apollodorus instead calls her "daughter of Tartarus and Earth," a completely different lineage that the two sources never reconcile.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 287-305
Why is Echidna called the "mother of all monsters"?
Because so many of Greek mythology's best-known monsters trace directly back to her across the surviving sources: Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra, the Chimera, and, through her son Orthus, the Sphinx as well, all named as her children in Hesiod's Theogony alone.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 306-332
Where did Echidna live?
Hesiod places her in a hollow cave deep within the earth at a place called Arima, deliberately set apart from both gods and mortals, where she is said to have lived on raw flesh rather than any ordinary food.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 295-300
Where Accounts Differ
- Echidna's own parentage
- whether Echidna ever died
- Echidna or Chimera as the Sphinx's mother
- Echidna's parentage is disputed: Hesiod makes her the daughter of Chrysaor and the Oceanid Callirhoe, a full sister of Geryon, while Apollodorus instead calls her "daughter of Tartarus and Earth."
- Her death is likewise inconsistent with Hesiod's own description of her as ageless and immortal: Apollodorus has the giant Argus Panoptes kill her in her sleep, a detail Hesiod's Theogony does not include at all.
- The Sphinx and Nemean lion are attributed to Echidna through a further union with her own son Orthus in the same Hesiod passage; the underlying Greek is genuinely ambiguous about whether Echidna or the Chimera is meant as their mother.
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 295-332
- Apollodorus, Library 2.1.2
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)