Campe


 * This article is about a mythological monster. To read about the lexicographer, please see Joachim Heinrich Campe.

In Greek mythology, Campe or Kampê (Κάμπη "crooked"; confer καμπή "a twist, a bend") is the name of a chthonic female monster (drakaina (mythology)). Campe was set by Cronus to guard the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus after Cronus had imprisoned them there; she was killed by Zeus when he rescued the Cyclopes for help in the battle with the Titans Campe was a she-dragon with a woman's head and torso and a scorpion-like tail. Nonnus, in Dionysiaca (18.23-264) gives the most elaborated description of her. Joseph Eddy Fontenrose suggests that for Nonnus Campe is a Greek refiguring of Tiamat and that "she is Echidna under another name, as Nonnos indicates, calling her Echidnaean Enyo, identifying her snaky legs with Echidna's," and "a female counterpart of his Typhon".

In his lexicon Hesychius of Alexandria (K.614) noted that the poet Epicharmos had called Campe a kētos, or sea-monster.

In other literature
Campe (spelled "Kampe") appears as a character in the fourth book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Battle of the Labyrinth, where she is a member of the Titan Kronos' army of monsters. She is first encountered serving as Briares' jailer on Alcatraz. She is described as half woman and half dragon. The dragon portion is twenty feet long with black scales, large claws, a barbed tail, and dragon legs made out of hundreds of viper snakes. The human portion had snakes for hair similar to Medusa. Where the human and dragon portions meet contained bubbly skin with the heads of various wild animals growing from each bubble. She also wields two poison-tipped scimitars. She is killed by Briares (the Hundred Handed One) who threw rocks at her.