In Greek mythology, Campe or Kampe (/ˈkæmpiː/;^[1] Greek: Κάμπη) was a female monster. She was the guard, in Tartarus, of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, whom Uranus had imprisoned there. When it was prophesied to Zeus that he would be victorious in the Titanomachy—the great war against the Titans—with the help of Campe's prisoners, he killed Campe, freeing the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, who then helped Zeus defeat Cronus.^[2]

Name

The name given in Greek texts is Κάμπη, with an accent on the first syllable. As a common noun κάμπη is the Greek word for caterpillar or silkworm. It is probably related to the homophone καμπή (with the accent on the second syllable) whose first meaning is the winding of a river, and came to mean, more generally, any kind of bend, or curve.^[3]

Sources

We first hear of the imprisonment of the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, and their subsequent release by Zeus, in Hesiod's Theogony.^[4] However Hesiod makes no mention of Campe, or any guard for the prisoners. These events were probably also told in the lost epic poem the Titanomachy,^[5] upon which the mythographer Apollodorus perhaps based his account of the war.^[6] According to Apollodorus:

Zeus waged the war against Cronus and the Titans. They fought for ten years, and Earth prophesied victory to Zeus if he should have as allies those who had been hurled down to Tartarus. So he slew their jailoress Campe, and loosed their bonds.^[7]

Diodorus Siculus says that the god Dionysus, while camped beside the Libyan city of Zabirna, encountered and killed "an earth-born monster called Campê" that was terrorizing the city, killing many of its residents.^[8] Neither Apollodorus nor Diodorus provide any description of Campe; however, the Greek poet Nonnus provides an elaborately detailed one. According to Nonnus, Zeus, with his thunderbolt, destroyed:

highheaded Campe ... for all the many crooked shapes of her whole body. A thousand crawlers from her viperish feet, spitting poison afar, were fanning Enyo to a flame, a mass of misshapen coils. Round her neck flowered fifty various heads of wild beasts : some roared with lion's heads like the grim face of the riddling Sphinx; others were spluttering foam from the tusks of wild boars; her countenance was the very image of Scylla with a marshalled regiment of thronging dog's heads. Doubleshaped, she appeared a woman to the middle of her body, with clusters of poison-spitting serpents for hair. Her giant form, from the chest to the parting-point of the thighs, was covered all over with a bastard shape of hard sea-monsters' scales. The claws of her wide-scattering hands were curved like a crooktalon sickle. From her neck over her terrible shoulders, with tail raised high over her throat, a scorpion with an icy sting sharp-whetted crawled and coiled upon itself. Such was manifoldshaped Campe as she rose writhing, and flew roaming about earth and air and briny deep, and flapping a couple of dusky wings, rousing tempests and arming gales, that blackwinged nymphe of Tartaros: from her eyelids a flickering flame belched out far-travelling sparks. Yet heavenly Zeus ... killed that great monster, and conquered the snaky Enyo Cronos.^[9]

Thus for Nonnus, Campe is woman-like from the upper torso and above, with the scales of a sea-monster from the chest down, with several snaky appendages, along with the parts of several other animals protruding from her body.^[10] His description of Campe is similar to Hesiod's description of the monster Typhon (Theogony 820 ff.).^[11] Joseph Eddy Fontenrose says that for Nonnus, Campe "was a female counterpart of his Typhon ... That is, she was Echidna under a different name, as Nonnus indicates, calling her Echidnaean Enyo, identifying her snaky legs with echidnas, and likening her to Sphinx and Skylla".^[12]

Notes

References

• Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Butler, George F., "Spenser, Milton, and the Renaissance Campe: Monsters and Myths in The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost, in Milton Studies 40, Albert C. Labriola (Editor), University of Pittsburgh Press; 1st edition (December 13, 2001). ISBN 978-0-8229-4167-5. pp. 19–37.
• Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History. Translated by C. H. Oldfather. Twelve volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989. Online version by Bill Thayer
• Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, University of California Press, 1959. ISBN 9780520040915.
• Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
• Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. ISBN 978-0-631-20102-1.
• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360.
• Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Nonnus, Dionysiaca; translated by Rouse, W H D, II Books XVI–XXXV. Loeb Classical Library No. 345, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940. Internet Archive.
• Ogden, Daniel, Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-19-955732-5.
• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• West, M. L. (2002), "'Eumelos': A Corinthian Epic Cycle?" in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 122, pp. 109–133. JSTOR 3246207.
• West, M. L. (2003), Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Edited and translated by Martin L. West. Loeb Classical Library No. 497. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-674-99605-2. Online version at Harvard University Press.