Sphinx
Generation VII · Riddling guardian of Thebes
The Sphinx of Greek myth had a woman's head, a lion's body, and an eagle's wings, and she perched outside Thebes strangling travelers who failed her riddle: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? When Oedipus answered 'a human being,' her power was broken and she hurled herself from her rock to her death. Hesiod's 'she' is famously ambiguous here: the mother by Orthrus may be Chimera or Echidna, depending on the reading.