Deity · Greek · c. 700 BCE
Typhon
Also called Typhoeus · also recorded as Τυφῶν (per Wikidata)
The hundred-headed monster who nearly unseats Zeus, identified by the Greeks with Set and echoed in Revelation's dragon.
Deep source base
Typhon is the closest thing Greek myth has to a rival creator-scale adversary, and the reason he matters here is what later readers did with him. Hesiod gives him a hundred serpent heads and a voice that changes between bull, lion and hiss; Zeus burns him and pins him under Etna. Greeks in Egypt then identified him with Set, which is how a Greek monster became the standard translation for an Egyptian god of disorder and how both ended up in the same demonological pile. Revelation's dragon, swept down by a heavenly power, is not borrowed from Hesiod, but it is the same shape, and the Church Fathers who knew their Hesiod read it against him.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None. The Corycian cave in Cilicia was pointed out as his lair, which is tourism rather than worship; nobody sacrificed to him.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Iliad · c. 750 BCE
- Named there as
- Typhoeus
- Rank
- Titan of Storms
- Pantheon
- Greek
- Order
- Greek chaos powers
- Base of operations
- None. The Corycian cave in Cilicia was pointed out as his lair, which is tourism rather than worship; nobody sacrificed to him.
- Era
- c. 700 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian, Greek
- Placed in
- The Greek Succession
Traits
- Domain
- Storm-wind, volcanic fire, chaos
- Traditional form
- A hundred serpent heads, coils for legs, fire from the eyes
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to Typhon, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic2
3 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Typhon, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 758 years
One line, and it is the useful one: the earth groans under Zeus's anger as it does about Typhoeus in the country of the Arimoi. The poem assumes the audience knows where the monster is buried, which puts the whole combat myth in circulation two centuries before the Theogony wrote it down as a narrative.
Fights Zeus for the sovereignty of the cosmos and is thrown down into Tartarus.
Buried under Sicily with Etna on his head, and the mountain's eruptions explained as his struggling. Ovid also has the gods flee to Egypt and hide in animal shapes to escape him, which is a Greek explanation of Egyptian animal worship and a neat inversion of the direction this corpus usually travels in.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Identified with Lotan
Hesiod's monster shares the storm-god-versus-serpent structure.
Identified with Set
The Greeks identified Set with Typhon outright, and the equation stuck.
Opposes Zeus
The last challenger to the Olympian order.
Identified with Apep
The serpent the sun fights, read by the Greeks as their own chaos-monster. Recorded by Wikidata (P460); not asserted by a text this corpus carries.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Typhon?
Is Typhon the same as Lotan?
What rank is Typhon?
How else is Typhon spelled?
What is Typhon said to do?
How old is Typhon?
Nearest in the corpus
If Typhon is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
Hades
Lord of the Underworld · Greek
Ruler of the dead by lot rather than by punishment — a god of the underworld who is not evil, a distinction Christian cosmology cannot express.
The Daimones
Class of Spirits · Greek
Guardian spirits — Socrates had one that advised him — whose name the Greek scriptures borrowed for evil spirits, permanently poisoning the word.
Hecate
Goddess of Crossroads · Greek
Hesiod has Zeus honour her above all others. By the medieval period she presides over witchcraft instead, a demotion with no wrongdoing attached to it anywhere.
Apollo
God of Prophecy · Greek
Oracle-giver at Delphi, and the god who both sends plague and lifts it. Later traditions split that duality between an angel and a demon; Greece kept it in one figure.
Ares
God of War · Greek
War as slaughter rather than strategy — disliked by the Greeks who worshipped him, and rehabilitated entirely by the Romans as Mars.
The books behind Typhon
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Theogony & Works and Days
Hesiod · c. 700 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read Theogony & Works and Days in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hesiod · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.