The Sphinx was a symbol of the ‘terrible mother’ in early greek mythlogy.
An augur of death, bringing extreme bad luck, and enbodying the perversion of the virtues of intellect, womanhood, and power.
A rapist of men, she would ride them to death; using her tail as a tourniquet to keep the blood in their nether regions. The process always ended with her victim suffocating.
George Devereux says on the sphinx in Dreams in Greek Tragedy: "Tradition defines the Sphinx as a “Strangler” (“suffocator”) some scholars even hold that this is the correct translation of that creature’s name.“ And also ”[The Sphinx is] a cannibal: their raping, strangling and devouring tendencies are [practically] inseparable.“
The winged sphinx of Boeotian Thebes, the most famous in legend, was said to have terrorized the people by demanding the answer to a riddle taught to her by the Muses.