Orthus

Family: Erythia · Role: hound · First appears: Apollodorus, Library 2.5

Life events

• Heracles slew Geryones, Orthus, and Eurytion while driving the oxen to Tiryns.(Hesiod, Theogony 139-265 · 📍 Erythea)
  • With: Heracles Geryones Eurytion
  • “But Chrysaor was joined in love to Callirrhoe, the daughter of glorious Ocean, and begot three-headed Geryones. Him mighty Heracles slew in sea-girt Erythea by his shambling oxen on that day when he drove the wide-browed oxen to holy Tiryns, and had crossed the ford of Ocean and killed Orthus and Eurytion the herdsman in the dim stead out beyond glorious Ocean.”
• Echidna and Typhaon produce Orthus and Cerberus.(Hesiod, Theogony 295-404)
  • With: Echidna Typhon Cerberus
  • “So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bare Orthus the hound of Geryones, and then again she bare a second, a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong.”

Apollodorus, Library 2.5

• parent: Typhon “Orthus, the two-headed hound, begotten by Typhon on Echidna”
• parent: Echidna “Orthus, the two-headed hound, begotten by Typhon on Echidna”

Hesiod, Theogony 139-265

• with Heracles (interaction) “and had crossed the ford of Ocean and killed Orthus and Eurytion the herdsman in the dim stead out beyond glorious Ocean.”

Hesiod, Theogony 295-404

• courtship with Echidna “But Echidna was subject in love to Orthus and brought forth the deadly Sphinx”
• child: Sphinx “But Echidna was subject in love to Orthus and brought forth the deadly Sphinx”
• child: Nemean lion “But Echidna was subject in love to Orthus and brought forth the deadly Sphinx which destroyed the Cadmeans, and the Nemean lion”

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Extracted from the original text of Greek Mythology. Made with Rho MD.