Theogony Alternate Translation

When Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, Earth,
Pregnant by Tartaros thanks to golden Aphrodite,
Delivered her last-born child, Typhoios,
830 A god whose hands were like engines of war,
Whose feet never gave out, from whose shoulders grew
The hundred heads of a frightful dragon
Flickering dusky tongues, and the hollow eye sockets
In the eerie heads sent out fiery rays,
835 And each head burned with flame as it glared.
And there were voices in each of these frightful heads,
A phantasmagoria of unspeakable sound,
Sometimes sounds that the gods understood, sometimes
The sound of a spirited bull, bellowing and snorting,
840 Or the uninhibited, shameless roar of a lion,
Or just like puppies yapping, an uncanny noise,
Or a whistle hissing through long ridges and hills.
And that day would have been beyond hope of help,
And Typhoios would have ruled over Immortals and men,
845 Had the father of both not been quick to notice.
He thundered hard, and the Earth all around
Rumbled horribly, and wide Heaven above,
The Sea, the Ocean, and underground Tartaros.
Great Olympos trembled under the deathless feet
850 Of the Lord as he rose, and Gaia groaned.
The heat generated by these two beings—
Scorching winds from Zeus’ lightning bolts
And the monster’s fire—enveloped the violet sea.
Earth, sea, and sky were a seething mass,
855 And long tidal waves from the immortals’ impact
Pounded the beaches, and a quaking arose that would not stop.
Hades, lord of the dead below, trembled,
And the Titans under Tartaros huddled around Cronos,
At the unquenchable clamor and fearsome strife.
860 When Zeus’ temper had peaked, he seized his weapons,
Searing bolts of thunder and lightning,
And as he leaped from Olympos, struck. He burned
All the eerie heads of the frightful monster,
And when he had beaten it down, he whipped it until
865 It reeled off maimed, and vast Earth groaned.
And a firestorm from the thunder-stricken lord
Spread through the dark rugged glens of the mountain,
And a blast of hot vapor melted the earth like tin
When smiths use bellows to heat it in crucibles,
870 Or like iron, the hardest substance there is,
When it is softened by fire in mountain glens
And melts in bright earth under Hephaistos’ hands.
So the earth melted in the incandescent flame.
And in anger Zeus hurled him into Tartaros’ pit.
875 And from Typhoios come the damp monsoons,
But not Notos, Boreas, or silver-white Zephyros.
These winds are god-sent blessings to men,
But the others blow fitfully over the water,
Evil gusts falling on the sea’s misty face,
880 A great curse for mortals, raging this way and that,
Scattering ships and destroying sailors—no defense
Against those winds when men meet them at sea.
And others blow over endless, flowering earth
Ruining beautiful farmlands of sod-born humans,
885 Filling them with dust and howling rubble.


- Hesiod, The Theogony (Stanley Lombardo, Anthology of Classical Myth translation)