Campe

This article is about a mythological monster. To read about the lexicographer, please see Joachim Heinrich Campe.

A chthonic female monster in Greek mythology, Campe or Kampe ("crooked") was set by Cronus to guard the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus after Cronus imprisoned them there; she was killed by Zeus when he rescued the Cyclopes for help in the battle with the Titans Campe was a she-dragon with a woman's head and torso and a scorpion-like tail. Nonnus, in Dionysiaca (18.23-264) gives the most elaborated description of her. Joseph Eddy Fontenrose suggests that for Nonnus Campe is a Greek refiguring of Tiamat and that "she is Echidna under another name, as Nonnos indicates, calling her Echidnaean Enyo, identifying her snaky legs with echidna's," and "a female counterpart of his Typhon". In his lexicon Hesychius of Alexandria (K.614) noted that the poet Epicharmos had called Campe a kētos, or sea-monster.

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