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This was a headache to research because ‘Scolopendra’ is the family of large tropical centipedes.  Considering this creature is a sea monster, you can imagine how tough it was to find a semi-decent picture.  Everything was centipedes until I added mythology, folklore, sea monster, and other words to the search.  It wasn’t any easy getting information either.

This sea monster is from Greek mythology and what I found doesn’t really match the picture above.  In ‘Aelian, on Animals’, it is said to be the biggest of sea monsters.  It has large, hairy nostrils and the tail of a crayfish.  It has multiple webbed feet and large claws.  There are some stories that have the Skolopendra with the head of a whale, which might mean someone saw a baleen whale and mistook it for a monster.  It was said to be big enough to smash ships with its tail, but it didn’t go near fire.

Supposedly, this was the largest monster child of two gods.  The father was Phorkys the sea-god of the hidden deep whose name might mean seal.  The mother was Keto the goddess of sea monster and marine life.  Her name means whale or sea-monster.  All of their children were horrifying sea monsters, which includes the Gorgons, Skylla, Ladon, Thoosa (mother of the Polyphemus), Echidna (in some legends), and the Graiai.  I only recognize a few names in there.

Some stories have the Skolopendra being rather docile and neutral unless it was provoked to violence.  So, it would sit around waiting to be hooked and then dislodge its bowels to get itself free.  If a ship got too close, it would destroy it, but nobody ever had the courage to look at it if it was caught.  So, violent encounters would have been accidental.  Maybe Hercules dealt with it, but I think I may have just found some Greek mythology fan fiction.

Unfortunately, that’s all I could find on the Skolopendra.  I found that nearly all of the obscure sea monsters I tried to research resulted in the same scarcity of information.  The Kraken and leviathan were pretty much it.  Found the giant fish version of Bahamut too, but that wasn’t a lot thanks to Final Fantasy.  Even Carcinus (who I think became the Cancer zodiac sign) and Capricorn weren’t giving me much.  So, here is the Skolopendra in all of its simple glory.