Why are most Greek monsters in myths considered females?
august > May 21st, 2017, 02:17 PM
No, there are plenty of male monsters - chimaera, cyclops, Minotaur, Typhon, etc. But sometimes one needs to be female, for xample Echidna, who
literally gave birth to most of the others, so therefore has to be female. I think in the Odyssey that's more coincidence than anything else - harpies,
Scylla and Charybdis were pre-existing female stories that any adventurer, including Odysseus, would encounter, while Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens
had the added quality of seduction, so they had to be female to lure the male sailors. The Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters and the Laestrygonians weren't all female.