Echidna: Mother of Monsters

Half beautiful maiden, half monstrous serpent. She was the mother heroes could never kill. Hesiod saw her plainly. Above the waist, a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks; below it, a vast speckled snake that ate raw flesh in a cave deep beneath the holy earth. They called her Echidna, and her body bred the terrors of Greek legend: Cerberus, the Hydra, the Chimera, the riddling Sphinx. One by ...