Typhon. Typhon, also Typhoeus, Typhaon or Typhos, was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or the island of Ischia. Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story is also connected with that of Python, and both stories probably derived from several Near Eastern antecedents. Typhon was also identified with the Egyptian god of destruction Set. In later accounts Typhon was often confused with the Giants. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus: when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. The mythographer Apollodorus adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants. Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or simply earth-born, with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus, then slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, and Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals. Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, and in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus. The poet Pindar calls Typhon Cilician, and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in the famous Cilician cave, an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Typhon is called the dweller of the Cilician caves, and both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus have Typhon born in Cilicia. The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Zeus' father Cronus and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia under Arimon, but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him. According to Hesiod, Typhon was terrible, outrageous and lawless, immensely powerful, and on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise: Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a 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 another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as fell and cruel, and like neither gods nor men. Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed, while apparently a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria, depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails below. Aeschylus calls Typhon fire-breathing. For Nicander, Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, and strange appearance, with many heads, hands, and wings, and with huge snake coils coming from his thighs.