1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Typhon

TYPHON (Typhaon, Typhoeus), in Greek mythology, youngest son of Gaea and Tartarus. He is described as a grisly monster with a hundred dragons' heads, who was conquered and cast into Tartarus by Zeus. In other accounts, he is confined in the land of the Arimi in Cilicia (Iliad, ii. 783) or under Etna (Aeschylus, P.V. 370) or in other volcanic regions, where he is the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the personification of volcanic forces. Amongst his children by Echidna are Cerberus, the Lernaean hydra, and the Chimaera. He is also the father of dangerous winds (typhoons), and by later writers is identified with the Egyptian Seth.

See Eduard Meyer, Set-Typhon (1875), and M. Mayer, Die Giganten und Titanen (1887); Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie (1894), pp. 63–66; O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, ii. 845, 1333, according to whom Typhon, the “ snake-footed ” earth-spirit, is the god of the destructive wind, perhaps originally of the sirocco, but early taken by the Phoenicians to denote the north wind, in which sense it was probably used by the Greeks of the 5th century in nautical language; and also in Philologus, ii. n.f. (1889), where he endeavours to prove the identity of Typhon with the Phoenician Zephon (Baal-Zephon, translated in Gesenius's Thesaurus by “ locus Typhonis " or “ Typhoni saar ”), signifying “ darkness,” “the north wind," and perhaps “ snake ”; A. von Mess, “ Der Typhonmythus bei Pindar und Aeschylus," in Rhein. Mus. lvi. (1901), 167.