Orthrus

Orthrus (also spelled Orthus or Orthos) was a two-headed hound in Greek mythology, the brother of Cerberus and the watchdog of the cattle of Geryon. Heracles killed him in the tenth of his labours, when he went west to fetch Geryon’s cattle for Eurystheus. In Hesiod’s Theogony he is also the father of the Sphinx and the Nemean lion.

Parents and Brothers

Hesiod says that Typhaon (Typhoeus), the terrible and lawless, was joined in love to Echidna, the half-nymph, half-serpent who lived in a cave in the land of the Arimoi. She conceived and bore fierce offspring. The first was Orthus, the hound of Geryon; the second was Cerberus, the fifty-headed hound of Hades; the third was the Lernaean Hydra; and the fourth was the Chimera, which breathed fire (Hesiod, Theogony 295–325). Apollodorus likewise makes Orthus the child of Typhon and Echidna and says that he was two-headed (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.10).

The Dog of Geryon

Geryon owned red cattle on the island of Erytheia, out beyond Ocean in the far west. Hesiod calls him three-headed; Apollodorus says that he had the body of three men grown together and joined at the waist, but parted into three at the flanks and thighs (Hesiod, Theogony 287–290; Apollodorus, Library 2.5.10). The herdsman was Eurytion, and the watchdog was Orthus.

Eurystheus ordered Heracles to fetch the cattle as his tenth labour. According to Apollodorus, Heracles lodged on Mount Abas on Erytheia. The dog saw him and rushed at him, but Heracles struck it down with his club, and he killed the herdsman Eurytion when he came to help (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.10). Hesiod says only that Heracles killed Orthus and Eurytion the herdsman in the dim stead out beyond glorious Ocean, on the day he drove the wide-browed oxen to Tiryns (Hesiod, Theogony 289–294). Geryon followed them and was killed by Heracles beside the river Anthemus, as Apollodorus tells it. In the poet Quintus of Smyrna, a description of Heracles’ deeds shows the slain Geryon among his cattle, with the hound Orthros lying dead in front of him, “like Cerberus his brother-hound” (Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 6.249–255). See the pages on Geryon and the Labours of Heracles for the whole journey.

Children of Orthrus

Hesiod says that “she”, overpowered by Orthus, bore the deadly Sphinx, the ruin of the Thebans, and the Nemean lion, which Hera raised and set down in the hills of Nemea as a plague to men until Heracles subdued it (Hesiod, Theogony 326–332). The lines come straight after the Chimera, so the mother is most naturally the Chimera, Orthus’ own sister; they can also be read as referring to Echidna, and this is why Orthus is sometimes called the mate of his mother Echidna.

Other writers give different parents for these monsters. Apollodorus says that the Sphinx’s mother was Echidna and her father Typhon, and that the Nemean lion was a creature begotten by Typhon (Apollodorus, Library 3.5.8, 2.5.1). The Hydra and the Chimera are his sisters, not his children.

Orthrus Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 287–332; Apollodorus, Library 2.5.1, 2.5.10 and 3.5.8; Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 6.249–255.

See Also: Geryon, Cerberus, Typhoeus, Echidna, Heracles, Eurystheus, Labours of Heracles, Chimera, Sphinx, Lernaean Hydra, Nemean Lion