Lernaean Hydra

The 16th-century German illustrator has been influenced by the Beast of Revelation in his depiction of the Hydra.

Henry IV, as Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra (i.e. the Catholic League), workshop of Toussaint Dubreuil, circa 1600.

In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra (Greek: Λερναία Ὕδρα) was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic water beast (as its name evinces) that possessed seven heads — and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath so virulent even her tracks were deadly.^[1] The Hydra of Lerna was killed by Hercules as one of his Twelve Labours. Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid, though archaeology has borne out the myth that the sacred site was older even than the Mycenaean city of Argos since Lerna was the site of the myth of the Danaids. Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld, and the Hydra was its guardian.^[2]

The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna (Theogony, 313), both of whom were noisome offspring of the earth goddess Gaia.^[3]

The Second Labour of Hercules

Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Hercules 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, a deep cave that it only came out of to terrorize neighboring villages.^[4] He then confronted it, wielding a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings) or a sword. Ruck and Staples (1994: 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, Hercules. The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal.

Hercules and the Hydra, (c. 1475) by Antonio Pollaiuolo (Galleria degli Uffizi).

The details of the struggle are explicit in Apollodorus (2.5.2): realising that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Hercules called on his nephew Iolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired by Athena) of using a burning firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Hercules 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.

Hercules later used an arrow dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill the centaur Nessus; and Nessus's tainted blood was applied to the Tunic of Nessus, by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge. Both Strabo and Pausanias 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 Hercules used on the centaur.^[5]

Hercules slaying the Hydra, Hans Sebald Beham engraving, 1545

When Eurystheus, the agent of ancient Hera who was assigning The Twelve Labours to Heracles, found out that it was Heracles' nephew Iolaus 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 twelve 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's crab was at the site to bite his feet and bother him, hoping to cause his death. Hera set it in the Zodiac to follow the Lion (Eratosthenes, Catasterismi). When the sun is in the sign of Cancer, the crab, the constellation Hydra has its head nearby.

Popular culture

The Lernaean Hydra, as the most readily identified of Heracles' monstrous opponents, figures vividly in mass-market popular culture.

Notes

Sources

• Harrison, Jane Ellen (1903). Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. 
• Graves, Robert (1955). The Greek Myths. 
• Kerenyi, Carl (1959). The Heroes of the Greeks. 
• Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion. Harvard University Press. 
• Ruck, Carl and Staples, Danny (1994). The World of Classical Myth. 
• Grimal, Pierre (1986). The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 

External links

• Statue of the Hydra battling Hercules at the Louvre