How many creatures in Greek mythology do you know? I’m sure most of you have heard of the Minotaur, Scylla, and Charybdis, as well as the Centaurs and Cyclops.
Possibly you know even more, but here we will meet Empousa, Phantasos, and four other terrible monsters once imagined in the Greek world.
How?
Simply by traveling to the deep chambers of the earth, where they are hidden, waiting perhaps for their chance to rise again into the world of the living.
Forgotten Monsters of Greek Mythology
Today, we will not talk about the famous fantastic creatures that have appeared in movies and books countless times. Instead, we will try to find monsters that were once mighty and terrible, but now have been forgotten.
There are many of them, so we will not find them all. But we will get a picture of a different, fantastic mythological world of Bronze Age Greece that has remained invisible.
Greek mythology covers a huge range of fiction. In its stories, you will find witches, monsters, elves, demons, ghosts, giants and dwarves, winged dragons and horses, enchanted objects, and mechanical beings.
Fantastic creatures, strange to the 21st-century human mind, but for the people of antiquity they were often considered real.
Some said that they saw them, some heard them, and some were destroyed or saved by them. Many of these creatures appear in the tales of ancient Greek heroes.
For the human of antiquity, mythology was his history, religion, and teaching — a part of daily life.
That is why many strange mythological beings, such as the Lamies and Dragons, survived into the newest legends and folk tales of the Greek tradition.
Monsters of Greek Mythology are not dead. They are just imprisoned in deep caves from which they cannot escape, unless…someone releases them!
We just want to meet them, so we have to travel deep into the earth, using, where necessary, a lot of our imagination.
A fantastic trip in the depths of the Earth
But let’s talk no more, and let’s start the descent. We will sink into the depths of our mind, to its unknown side, where the subconscious resides.
In search of these strange mythological creatures, we will travel to the space-time of fantasy. In these deep caves, we will find everything gathered. So let’s move on!
We are already inside the cave. It is slightly illuminated by the torch we are holding. The light from its flames, in combination with the stalactites, forms strange, eerie shadows.
Ancient words are engraved on its walls, in unknown languages that once existed or have not existed yet. A smell of dirt and moisture is around, water drips from above, and whispers are heard all around.
It’s about time to start the long descent. We will find seven levels here, and we will go very deep down. What did you think? The long-lost imaginary creatures are not so easy to find.
Apatee – The goddess of Deception
So we reached the first level. It is difficult as the place is getting dark and narrow. It leads us to the entrance of the first chamber.
We first insert our heads and look carefully inside.
There is a woman-like creature sitting in the center. She has snakes instead of hair, bat wings come out of her back, and her hands end in lighted torches.
Other engravings around the walls depict her with fingers like vipers or whips. She looks at us with glowing eyes.
She looks like Erinyes, goddesses of Curse and Revenge. She is no other than Apatee, the goddess of Deception, the personification of deception, deceit, and falsehood.
Apatee, according to Hesiod, was a Greek primordial deity who represented deceit and trickery.
She was the daughter of Erebos (Darkness) and Nyx (Night), and was associated with several other deities, including her brothers Dolos (Guile), Momos (Blame), and Oizys (Distress).
Apatee was said to have deceived the gods and mortals alike, leading them to believe lies.
Her schemes could be so convincing that even the gods were fooled, though they eventually saw through her plans.
In some versions of Greek mythology, she helped create confusion among the enemy ranks during the war against the Titans.
Other myths associate Apatee with cunning figures such as Hermes, Odysseus, and Circe.
The name Apatee comes from the Greek word apatee, meaning “deception,” and the verb apatao, meaning “I cheat” or “I deceive.”
With her hand, she shows us a recess in the rock. From there we have to go if we want to continue even lower.
Argos or Panoptis
We follow her advice and reach the second chamber. A huge creature is waiting for us. A shepherd monster with a hundred eyes, trained to guard people and animals.
His name is Argos (which means “bright”) or Panoptis (“The one who sees everything”). Just remember the words optics and panoptic.
It makes sense if you consider that he had eyes everywhere, in front of and behind his head and all over his body. They say that when he slept, he closed only half of them, while the rest kept watch.
He was a descendant of Okeanos and Tethys and one of the most terrible monsters of Greek mythology.
Historian Ferekidis records that his eyes were only four, two in front and two behind, plus one placed on his neck by Hera. Others claim that they were infinite.
Aeschylus calls him “Myriopon voutan”, meaning “the million-eyed herdsman.”
The only time Argos fell asleep was when, while guarding Io after her transformation into a cow, Hermes, sent by Zeus, put him to sleep with his flute and killed him with his sword.
Argos was owned by the deity Hera and guarded her secret places when she was away.
It is worth mentioning that Io was a beautiful woman and the mistress of Zeus. The jealous Hera transformed her into a cow and set Argos to guard her. After his death, Io ran across the earth in madness, pursued by Oιstros, a large horsefly sent by Hera.
Here, the ancients sought to explain the presence of horseflies around cows and horses… a very artistic conception indeed.
After his death, Hera decided to honor Argos by placing his eyes on the peacock’s tail, one of her sacred birds.
You see, reading Greek Mythology, we discover so many peculiar things, even horseflies as punishers!
The Hecatoncheires (Men with a Hundred hands)
The further we go, the heavier we get. At the same time, we feel that we are slowly disappearing into space.
We are in the third chamber now. It is incredibly big. It does not seem to have a roof over it, only deep darkness.
Three huge giants are standing in front of us.
(Greek: Εκατόγχειρες, Hekatoncheires, also known as the Hundred-Handed Ones) There were three giants of incredible strength and ferocity, mentioned in the religious texts of ancient Greek mythology.
They were the offspring of Gaea (Earth) and Uranus (Heaven), and their names were Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges.
All three had fifty heads and one hundred arms, making them incredibly powerful. They were later imprisoned by their father, Uranus, in Tartara (Tartarus), a region of the underworld.
They symbolized uncontrollable forces of nature, especially the clouds.
Little is known about them beyond their enormous strength and destructive power. Their role in mythology is often overshadowed by their brethren, the Cyclopes.
Zeus liberated them so they could fight alongside him in the great war of the gods against the Titans. Maybe they still guard the Titans down there.
Phantasos: The monster that could take any form
We move even lower, into the fourth chamber. It looks empty, but it’s not.
On the walls are carved all the dreams that man has ever seen or will see. At its center, there is a strange creature without a clear form.
Its name is Phantasos, a being who can transform into any inanimate thing, real or imagined, and present himself to humans in any form he wishes.
Son of Hypnos (the god of Sleep) and Pasithea, one of the Charites (Graces).
His brothers were the god of dreams, Morpheus (who could take the form and imitate the voice of every human being), and Phoebus or Phobetor (who could imitate any animal).
Phantasos was associated with fantasy and imagination, allowing mortals to escape reality through their dreams and visions.
But we do not sleep now, so we do not see him clearly. And he does not even know if we have a human form, so he can’t harm us.
Empousa: The one who penetrates
From a small hole, we keep going down lower and lower.
We reach the fifth chamber. Whispers and murmurs surround us.
At the edge of the night stands a thing that once pretended to be a woman.
Empousa is a vampiric demon that has one single donkey leg, while the other has a bronze sandal that strikes sparks when she walks. From her thighs hang the parts of beasts best left unnamed. Daughter of Hecate, the witch queen of the Underworld, she slips from the shadows where the dead whisper and walks among the living when the moon is thin.
Her face is worse than any devil’s, twisted in the way nightmares bend a human smile — like the thing in The Exorcist, only older, hungrier, and real. Her eyes roll white, her mouth stretches too wide, and when she laughs it sounds like metal tearing.
Sometimes she burns from within, her skin glowing like embers. Sometimes she wears another face — a fawn, a wolf, or the perfect mask of beauty — until the moment you’re too close to turn away.
She hunts the lonely, the lost, the ones who think no one is watching. When she feeds, the air itself curdles; dogs refuse to bark, and oil lamps die without smoke.
What happens next is better left unspoken.
The old ones said there was one way to drive her off:
curse her name, and mean it.
The dwarf demons Daktyloi (Fingers) or Idaioi
We are moving forward; now we are moving almost intangibly. We have to hurry because the lower we go, the more we get lost.
We are in the sixth chamber. Some creatures in the form of low rocks are here.
Mountain dwarf demons have magical qualities, and they are also great metallurgists.
People say that they jumped from the ground when the Titaness Rhea put her fingers in the ground as she was giving birth to Zeus. Five women came out of her left hand and five men from the right, standing beside her as assistants in childbirth. However, there is no clear evidence as to the origin of these mysterious figures, and their mythology has been lost through time.
They are called Daktyloi or Idaioi. The name comes from the Greek daktylos, meaning “finger,” suggesting their small size.
The Daktyloi of Eleusis were mythological figures in classical Athens, dating back to the 6th century BCE. According to myth, they were dwarf demons who protected the Mysteries of Eleusis, a set of secret ceremonies at the heart of the mystery cult at Eleusis.
They were said to take the form of snakes, dogs, and eagles and to possess magical powers.
They got their name either because they jumped out of holes in the ground made by the goddess’s fingers or because they were small, like fingers, but they were great craftsmen.
It is said that later these women went to the island of Samothrace and began their worship ceremonies, the Mysteries of Daktyloi (Fingers), which later became the Kaverian mysteries.
According to Strabo, they numbered from three to one hundred. Others report twenty right-handed blacksmiths and thirty left-handed women witches.
They are quite often identified with the Kerkopes, a small race of demonic beings who supposedly lived in Asia Minor.
But we have said a lot, and it is time to continue.
The mighty Typhon, the father of all monsters
And here we are in the last chamber, the seventh.
Our torch is about to go out. We have descended so deep that we are now beneath Mount Etna, deep into the volcanic darkness where, according to the ancient stories, something enormous lies buried.
And there he is.
It is the strongest and largest imaginary creature that has ever walked the earth. The son of Tartarus and Gaia, the mighty Typhon, father of all monsters of Greek mythology. Read more about Typhon and his terrifying offspring.
He was a gigantic, terrifying creature, with serpentine forms, enormous wings and a hundred dragon heads. Fire came from his many mouths, while his voice was said to sound like the simultaneous cries of men, animals, birds and reptiles.
Typhon came to represent the final resistance of the savage and uncontrollable forces of nature against the order imposed by the gods.
Maybe that’s why we had to go so deep to find him.
Time to return, before we get completely lost and forgotten in the dark caves and labyrinthine basements we have dived into. Take a deep breath, and time counts backward.
We return today. In our place and present time.
Monstrous conclusion
We got only a little taste of those awful creatures that are hidden in the sanctuaries of the collective subconscious.
There are many caves, underground labyrinths, and galleries down there that, in a unique way, connect the various mythologies all over the world.
But we will talk about more creatures and even more deadly monsters of Greek mythology on another fantastic trip. For now, I hope you do not panic the next time you enter a cave…
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