In Greek mythology, Echidna (Greek: Ἔχιδνα, ekhis, ἔχις, meaning "she viper") was half woman half snake, known as the "Mother of All Monsters" because most of the monsters in Greek myth were mothered by her. In Theogony, Hesiod described her as:
[...] the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth. And there she has a cave deep down under a hollow rock far from the deathless gods and mortal men. There, then, did the gods appoint...