After Zeus banished the Titans,
now forbidden to show their faces to the Sky, [820]
gigantic Earth gave birth
to her youngest child, Typhoeus.
(Some say she had, due to Aphrodite’s golden charms,
had intercourse with Tartarus.)
Mighty are his hands.
Mighty are his exploits.
Sturdy are his feet.
Strong is the god. On his shoulders:
one hundred serpent heads.
He is a terrible dragon. [825]
One hundred black tongues lash out.
Out from his eyes,
from beneath the brows on his awful heads,
fire darts.
Whenever he looks around,
all of his whirling heads send jets of fire.
From each terrible head,
animal sounds come forth.
Indescribable is their variety of screams.
Sometimes [830]
when they howl, the gods can translate the language.
Sometimes the only voice heard is
a bull crying
with unrestrained force and unstoppable pride, or
sometimes a pitiless lion crying out
with competitive spirit, or
sometimes a hundred puppies yelping,
incredible to hear, or
sometimes the serpents simply hiss,
which the mountaintops echo back. [835]
That day of Typhoeus’ birth
could have been an inescapable turning point.
Typhoeus would have become Lord
over mortals and immortals both,
but the Zeusfather of husbands and gods
foresaw that Typhoeus would try to depose him.
And so he thundered hard and heavy.
Across all the Earth,
the terrifying sound echoed.
It echoed into the wide Sky above, [840]
then across Ocean’s sea and streams,
and down into Tartarus, below the Earth.
Beneath the god’s immortal feet,
great Olympus shook
as Lord Zeus sprang into action.
The Earth began to groan.
Then a flash of heat, from Zeus and Typhoeus,
penetrated the deep-blue Sea.
His thunder and lightning
clashed with that monster’s fire blasts. [845]
Spinning his heads, typhoon winds from Typhoeus
scattered Zeus’ flashing bolts.
The scattered bolts made the whole ground
boil up. Sky and waters too.
Tidal waves smashed the shores,
encircling all, engulfing all,
side effects of the immortals’ rage.
Then an unstoppable earthquake began.
Even Hades, lord of the dead below,
was shaken. [850]
Even the Titans, below in Tartarus,
who once fearlessly flanked Cronus in battle line,
were knocked into disarray
by the never-ending roar of this horrible strife.
At last, Zeus raised high his wrath.
His weapons, he fully deployed:
thunder, lightning,
and the smoking bolt.
Leaping from Olympus into the air,
he struck in all directions, [855]
raining down burning fire,
torching each prodigious head of the terrible monster.
Then he broke his body,
with bone-crushing blows.
Typhoeus, now crippled,
Zeus now toppled. And gigantic Earth groaned.
Smoldering with Zeus’ lightning fires,
toppled Typhoeus spread flame.
The dark mountain crags lit up,
glens ablaze [860]
where Typhoeus fell.
The greater part of gigantic Earth caught fire.
Under incredible heat,
she melted, as tin melts
under the craftsman’s skill,
in the crucible’s blast,
when it is heated.
She melted as the strongest iron melts
when, forged under blazing fire,
inside the mountain, [865]
under glowing ground,
the palms of Hephaestus bend it at will.
So too did Earth melt, so too did she bend,
beneath the glow of Zeus’ blazing fires.
Grieving at the cost of such a competitive spirit,
Zeus cast Typhoeus into wide Tartarus.
Typhoeus is father of all wet winds,
evil in their mighty blasts.
Notus and Boreas, however,
and the rapidly clearing Zephyr, are good winds. [870]
They are born from good gods, Astraeus and Eos.
They are a great help to mortals.
But Typhoeus’ evil winds
blow random squalls over the waters.
They assault
the misty sea,
a great plague for mortals,
as their evil storms rage.
They blow unpredictably,
smashing ships and [875]
scattering sailors.
Bravery is a useless defense against them
for the unlucky men
who meet them upon the sea.
They even invade
the boundless expanses of flowering Earth,
destroying the beloved works of humans,
who (unlike them) were born on the ground.
Typhoeus’ children, with dust and tumult,
remind us now of anarchy’s ancient threat. [880]