between Zeus and Typho (p. 121), who is represented as a terrible monster born in Cilicia, and possessed of a human head, together with a hundred dragon heads and many other formidable features. He looked fire from his eyes and flames blazed forth from his many mouths; not to mention that he was formed on such a scale that he reached the stars on high. From the first he declared war against Zeus and the gods, who, when they saw him making for Olympus, fled in various brute forms to Egypt. Zeus alone kept his ground and hurled his thunderbolt at Typho, but without much effect; the monster drove him to the other side of Syria, where Zeus attacked him in close combat with his sickle; but he was taken in the coils of his multiform foe, who snatched the sickle out of his hands and with it cut out the muscles of the god's hands and feet; then he carried him on his shoulders through the sea to Cilicia in a helpless state and threw him into a cave, at the same time that he hid his muscles away in a bear's skin, which he set a dragon-maid to guard. Hermes, however, with the rural god Ægipan came and stole the tendons, which the former fitted back in Zeus's body. The god then recovering his strength and his liberty, careered forth presently from Olympus in his chariot drawn by winged chargers, and began anew to ply Typho with his lightning, which had at length the effect of reducing the monster to a scorched skin.[1]
- ↑ See Apollodorus' Bibliotheca (in Westermann's Scriptores Poeticæ Historiæ Græci), i. 6, 3; but there is another version of the story of the tendons on record, for which see Nonnus' Dionysiaca, i. 363—534, to the effect that Zeus in his direst need was aided by Cadmus, who, disguised as a shepherd, charmed the monster with music, and obtained
