 In one account, from the Orphic tradition, Echidna was the daughter of Phanes (the Orphic father of all gods).Hesiod's Echidna was half beautiful maiden and half fearsome snake.Hesiod described "the goddess fierce Echidna" as a flesh eating "monster, irresistible", who was like neither "mortal men" nor "the undying gods", but was "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin", who "dies not nor grows old all her days."