Lernaean Hydra

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Lernaean Hydra

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, the Lernaean Hydra (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
: was an ancient nameless serpent

Serpent (symbolism)

Serpent is a word of Latin origin that is commonly used in a specifically mythology or religion context, signifying a snake that is to be regarded not as a mundane natural phenomenon nor as an object of scientific zoology, but as the bearer of some symbolic value....
-like chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
water beast (as its name evinces) that possessed 9 heads— the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint— and poisonous breath so virulent even her tracks were deadly. The Hydra of Lerna was killed by Heracles

Heracles

In Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles meaning "glory of Hera", or "Glorious through Hera" Alcides or Alcaeus " was a hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus....
as one of his Twelve Labours.

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek language

Serpent (symbolism)

Chthonic

Heracles

Lerna

In classical Greece, Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, south of Argos. Its site near the village Myloi, Argolis at the Argolic Gulf is most famous as the lair of the Lernaean Hydra, the chthonic many-headed water snake, a creature of great antiquity when Heracles killed it, as Heracles#Se...
in the Argolid, though archaeology has borne out the myth that the sacred site was older even than the Mycenaean city of Argos

Argos

Argos is a city in Greece in the Peloponnese near Nafplion, which was its historic harbour, named for Nauplius ....
, for Lerna was the site of the myth of the Danaids. Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld

Underworld

In the study of mythology and religion, the underworld is a generic term approximately equivalent to the lay term afterlife, referring to any place to which newly the dead souls go....
, and the Hydra was its guardian.

The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon

Typhon

In Greek mythology, Typhon , also Typheus/Typhoeus , Typhaon or Typhos is the final son of Gaia , fathered by Tartarus, and is the god of wind....
and Echidna

Echidna (mythology)

In the most ancient layers of Greek mythology, Echidna was called the "Mother of All Monsters". Echidna was described by Hesiod as a female monster spawned in a cave, who mothered with her mate Typhon every major horrible monster in the Greek myths,...
(Theogony
Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogy of the polytheism of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC....
, 313), noisome offspring of the earth goddess, Gaia

Gaia

Gaia or Gaea most commonly refers to Gaia , the primal Greek goddess of the earth. But it may also refer to:...
. It was said to be the sibling of the Nemean Lion

Nemean Lion

The Nemean lion was a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived in Nemea. He was eventually killed by Heracles. The lion was usually considered the offspring of Typhon and Echidna , but it was also said to have fallen from the moon, offspring of Zeus and Selene....
, the Stymphalian birds

Stymphalian birds

In Greek mythology, the Stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with wings of brass and sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and were pets of Ares, the god of war....
, the Chimaera

Chimera (mythology)

This article is about the Greek_Mythology creature. For other uses, see Chimera.In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
,and Cerberus

Cerberus

Cerberus is the name given to the entity which, in Greek mythology and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed dog which guards the gates of Hades, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping....
.

The Second Labor of Heracles

Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna

Lerna

In classical Greece, Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, south of Argos. Its site near the village Myloi, Argolis at the Argolic Gulf is most famous as the lair of the Lernaean Hydra, the chthonic many-headed water snake, a creature of great antiquity when Heracles killed it, as Heracles#Se...
, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He fired flaming arrows into its lair, the spring of Amymone

Amymone

In Greek mythology, Amymone was a daughter of Danaus. As the "blameless" Danaid, her name identifies her as, perhaps, identical to Hypermnestra , also the one Danaid who did not assassinate her Egyptian husband on their wedding night, as her 49 sisters did....
, to draw it out. He then confronted it, wielding a harvesting sickle

Sickle

A sickle is a hand-held agricultural tool with a curved blade typically used for harvesting cereal crop or cutting grass for hay. The inside of the curve is sharp, so that the user can draw or swing the blade against the base of the crop, catching it in the curve and slicing it at the same time....
in some early vase-paintings; a deep cave that it only came out of to terrorise neighboring villages. He then confronted it, wielding a sword. In some early vase-paintings; Ruck and Staples (p. 170) have pointed out that the chthonic creature's reaction was botanical: upon cutting off each of its heads he found that two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but the hero

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity,their Greek hero cult being one of the most distinctive features of Religion in ancient Greece....
, Heracles. The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal.

The details of the struggle are explicit in Apollodorus

Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greeks scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace....
(2.5.2): realising that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus

Iolaus

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
) of using a burning firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. Its one immortal head Heracles placed under a great rock on the sacred way between Lerna and Elaius (Kerenyi 1959:144), and dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood, and so his second task was complete. The alternative to this is that after cutting off one head he dipped his sword in it and used its venom to burn each head so it couldn't grow back.

Heracles later used an arrow dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill the centaur Nessus

Nessus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Nessus was a famous centaur who was killed by Heracles, and whose tainted blood in turn killed Heracles. He was the son of Ixion and Nephele, the Cloud....
; and Nessus's tainted blood was applied to the Tunic of Nessus, by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge. Both Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
and Pausanias

Pausanias

Pausanias *Pausanias , lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's Symposium*Pausanias , Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC...
report that the stench of the river Anigrus in Elis, making all the fish of the river inedible, was reputed to be due to the Hydra's poison, washed from the arrows Heracles used on the centaur.

When Eurystheus

Eurystheus

In Greek mythology, Eurystheus was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean Greece strongholds in the Argolid: Sthenelus was his father and the "victorious horsewoman" Nicippe his mother, and he was a grandson of the hero Perseus , as was his opponent Heracles....
, the agent of ancient Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
who was assigning to Heracles The Twelve Labours, found out that it was Heracles' nephew Iolaus

Iolaus

In Greek mythology, Iolaus or Iolaos was a Thebes, Greece divine hero, son of Heracles' brother Iphicles and Automedusa.He was famed for being Heracles' nephew and for helping with for some of his Labours of Hercules....
who had handed him the firebrand, he declared that the labour had not been completed alone and as a result did not count towards the ten labours set for him. The mythic element is an equivocating attempt to resolve the submerged conflict between an ancient ten Labours and a more recent twelve.

Constellation

Mythographers relate that the Lernaean Hydra and the crab were put into the sky after Heracles slew them. In an alternative version, Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
's crab was at the site to bite his feet and bother him, hoping to cause his death. Hera set it in the Zodiac

Zodiac

Zodiac denotes an annual cycle of twelve stations along the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the heavens through the constellations that divide the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude....
to follow the Lion

Leo (constellation)

Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for lion. Its symbol is , a corruption of the initial letter of ?e?? . Leo lies between dim Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east....
(Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greeks mathematician, poet, sportsperson, geographer and astronomer. He made several discoveries and inventions including a system of latitude and longitude....
, Catasterismi). When the sun is in the sign of Cancer

Cancer (constellation)

Cancer is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for crab and it is commonly represented as such. Its symbol is . Cancer is small and its stars are faint....
, the crab, the constellation Hydra

Hydra (constellation)

Hydra is the largest of the 88 modern constellations, measuring 1303 square degrees. It has a long history, having been included among the 48 constellations listed by the 1st century astronomer Ptolemy....
has its head nearby.

Lernaean Hydra

The Second Labor of Heracles

Constellation

Sources

External links