Typhon

Typhon is the final and worst thing Gaia produces — conceived, in most accounts, precisely because Zeus had defeated the Titans and she wanted an answer to him. Hesiod gives him a hundred serpent heads, each with dark flickering tongues, and voices that shift between a bull's bellow, a lion's roar, and something like human speech.

The battle is the largest in Greek myth. In the version Apollodorus tells, Typhon initially wins: he tears the sinews out of Zeus's hands and feet, hides them in a cave under guard, and leaves the king of the gods immobilised. Hermes steals them back. Only then does Zeus recover and fight properly, and he ends it by burying Typhon under Mount Etna, which is why the mountain still throws fire.

There is a memorable interlude in which the other gods flee to Egypt and hide by turning into animals — a story the Greeks told to explain why Egyptian gods have animal heads. Only Zeus and Athena are described as standing their ground.

Typhon is also where the word typhoon comes from, by way of Arabic and Persian intermediaries — the storm named after the storm-monster.

Hesiod ends the account with a note on what survived him. The dangerous winds that wreck ships and ruin harvests are said to be Typhon's, blowing still from where he lies — so the storms are not a memory of the monster but the monster's continuing activity. It is a neat way of explaining why the world remains hazardous after the gods have won.