Editing Echidna (mythology) (section)

==Description==
Hesiod's Echidna was half beautiful maiden and half fearsome snake. Hesiod described "the goddess fierce Echidna" as a flesh eating "monster, irresistible", who was like neither "mortal men" nor "the undying gods", but was "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin", who "dies not nor grows old all her days".<ref>[[Hesiod]], ''[[Theogony]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0130%3Acard%3D270 295-305 (Evelyn-White)].</ref> Hesiod's apparent association of the eating of raw flesh with Echidna's snake half suggests that he may have supposed that Echidna's snake half ended in a snake-head.<ref>Ogden 2013a, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ2pAK9luwkC&pg=PA81 p. 81].</ref> [[Aristophanes]] (late 5th century BC), who makes her a denizen of the underworld, gives Echidna a hundred heads (presumably snake heads), matching the hundred snake heads Hesiod says her mate [[Typhon]] had.<ref>[[Aristophanes]], [[The Frogs|''Frogs'']] [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0032%3Acard%3D460 473&ndash;474]; Hošek. p. 678. Ogden 2013a, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FQ2pAK9luwkC&pg=PA81 p. 81], calls Aristophanes' description "exuberant", which "need not relate to canon", see also Ogden 2013b [https://books.google.com/books?id=Vv0Fxm6Amh4C&pg=PA65 pp. 65&ndash;66]. For the hundred-headed Typhon see [[Hesiod]], ''[[Theogony]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0130%3Acard%3D820 825]; see also [[Aeschylus]] (?), ''[[Prometheus Bound]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text;jsessionid=4995E0C297BD54D0B2C116B6EB6720BF?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0010%3Acard%3D343 351]; [[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Apollod.+1.6.3 1.6.3]. [[Pindar]], ''Pythian'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0162%3Abook%3DP.%3Apoem%3D1 1.16]; [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0162%3Abook%3DP.%3Apoem%3D8 8.15&ndash;16], and ''Olympian'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0162%3Abook%3DO.%3Apoem%3D4 4.7], all give Typhon a hundred heads, but [[Pindar]], fragment 93 ''apud'' [[Strabo]], [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/13D*.html 13.4.6] (Race, [http://www.loebclassics.com/view/pindar-fragments/1997/pb_LCL485.329.xml pp. 328&ndash;329]) gives Typhon fifty.</ref>

In the Orphic account (mentioned above), Echidna is described as having the head of a beautiful woman with long hair and a serpent's body from the neck down.<ref>Orphic Fragment [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/138/mode/2up 58 Kern] = [[Athenagoras of Athens|Athenagoras]], ''Apology'' 20 ([[s:Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 2.djvu/411|p. 397]]); van den Broek, [https://books.google.com/books?id=jonvG8JvwvsC&pg=PA137 p. 137 n. 20]; Fowler 2013, [https://books.google.com/books?id=scd8AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA9 p. 9].</ref> [[Nonnus]], in his ''[[Dionysiaca]]'', describes Echidna as being "hideous" with "horrible poison".<ref>[[Nonnus]], ''[[Dionysiaca]]'' [https://archive.org/stream/dionysiaca02nonnuoft#page/82/mode/2up 18.273 ff. (II pp. 82&ndash;83)].</ref>