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| "And I understand everyone of them has a different father." |
Echidna was the daughter of Gaiea and Tartarus.
Echidna was half-woman, half-snake, but compared to her offspring, she was Angelina Jolie.
You’ve heard the phrase “The Mother of All…” as in “The Mother of All Battles,” “The Mother of All Cheezy-Curls,” well, Echidna was the Mother of All Monsters, and it wasn’t just hyperbole.
If you wanted to be a monster in a Greek myth you had to be one of Echidna’s kids or otherwise get turned into a monster by an angry god.
1 The strange thing was how little family resemblance there was among her children – only two of them, the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece, and Scylla, even remotely looked like snakes, and none of them were human.
One was actually a pig.
2 Most of them didn’t amount to much except as sword-fodder for one hero or another, but some of them made themselves useful: for example the eagle who tore out Prometheus’ liver each morning at dawn.
Steady work and free meals. Or Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades – three times the barks with one-third the fleas.
1. Lucky, there were plenty of angry gods around, so it wasn't like a glass ceiling as far as getting to be a monster.
2. The myth calls her a "sow." I guess that's more dignified.
