The Homeric Hymn describes the serpentess as "the bloated, great she-dragon, a fierce monster wont to do great mischief to men upon earth, to men themselves and to their thin-shanked sheep; for she was a very bloody plague",[2] and says that "whosoever met the dragoness, the day of doom would sweep him away".[3] According to the Hymn, she was the foster mother of the snaky monster Typhon, who was given to the dragoness, "an evil to an evil" (κακῷ κακόν), by his mother Hera.[4] Typhon was to eventually battle Zeus, for supremacy of the cosmos.[5] The Hymn goes on to describe how, while building his oracular temple at Delphi, Apollo encountered the she-serpent near a "sweet flowing spring".[6] Apollo shot the dragoness with an arrow from his bow,[7] and the monster: