Lernaean Hydra

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This article is about the mythological monster. For other uses, see Hydra.
Lernaean Hydra
Gustave Moreau's 19th-century depiction of the Hydra, influenced by the Beast from the Book of Revelation
FamilyChild of Typhon and Echidna
FolkloreGreek mythology
CountryGreece
RegionLerna

The Lernaean Hydra or Hydra of Lerna (

Mycenaean Argos. In the canonical Hydra myth, the monster is killed by Heracles (Hercules) as the second of his Twelve Labors.[2]

According to Hesiod, the Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna.[3] It had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly.[4] The Hydra possessed many heads, the exact number of which varies according to the source. Later versions of the Hydra story add a regeneration feature to the monster: for every head chopped off, the Hydra would regrow two heads.[5] Heracles required the assistance of his nephew Iolaus to cut off all of the monster's heads and burn the neck using a sword and fire.[6]

Development of the myth

The oldest extant Hydra narrative appears in Hesiod's

Alcaeus (c. 600 BC), who gave it nine heads. Simonides, writing a century later, increased the number to fifty, while Euripides, Virgil, and others did not give an exact figure. Heraclitus the Paradoxographer rationalized the myth by suggesting that the Hydra would have been a single-headed snake accompanied by its offspring.[7]

Like the initial number of heads, the monster's capacity to regenerate lost heads varies with time and author. The first mention of this ability of the Hydra occurs with

Servius has the Hydra grow back three heads each time; the Suda does not give a number. Depictions of the monster dating to c. 500 BC show it with a double tail as well as multiple heads, suggesting the same regenerative ability at work, but no literary accounts have this feature.[8]

The Hydra had many parallels in

Mushhushshu
.

Second Labor of Heracles

Hercules and the Hydra, c. 1475, Uffizi Gallery
Pollaiuolo's Hercules and the Hydra (c. 1475). Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

Eurystheus, the king of the Tiryns, sent Heracles (or Hercules) to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave from which it emerged only to terrorize neighboring villages.[9] He then confronted the Hydra, wielding either a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword, or his famed club. Heracles then attempted to cut off the Hydra's heads but each time that he did so, one or two more heads (depending on the source) would grow back in its place. The Hydra was invulnerable as long as it retained at least one head.

The struggle is described by the mythographer

Apollodorus:[10] realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired by Athena) of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. Seeing that Heracles was winning the struggle, Hera sent a giant crab to distract him. He crushed it under his mighty foot. The Hydra's one immortal head was cut off with a golden sword given to Heracles by Athena. Heracles placed the head—still alive and writhing—under a great rock on the sacred way between Lerna and Elaius,[9]
and dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood. Thus, his second task was complete.

The alternate version of this myth is that after cutting off one head he then dipped his sword in its neck and used its venom to burn each head so it could not grow back. Hera, upset that Heracles had slain the beast she raised to kill him, placed it in the dark blue vault of the sky as the constellation Hydra. She then turned the crab into the constellation Cancer.

Heracles would later use arrows dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill other foes during his remaining labors, such as

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 Heracles used on the centaur.[11][12][13]

When Eurystheus, the agent of Hera who was assigning

The Twelve Labors
to Heracles, found out that Iolaus had handed Heracles the firebrand, he declared that the labor had not been completed alone and as a result did not count toward the ten labors set for him. The mythic element is an equivocating attempt to resolve the submerged conflict between an ancient ten labors and a more recent twelve.

Constellation

Main article: Hydra (constellation)
Portrait d'Henri IV en Hercule terrassant l'hydre de Lerne, c. 1600, Louvre Museum
Portrait of Henri IV as Hercules pinning the Hydra of Lerna, an allegory of the Navarrese king's defeat of the Catholic League during the French Wars of Religion. Workshop of Toussaint Dubreuil, c. 1600.

Greek and Roman writers related that

Alluttu ("The Crayfish
").

In art

See also

Citations

  1. ^ Kerenyi (1959), p. 143.
  2. ^ Ogden 2013, p. 26.
  3. ^ Hesiod, Theogony 310 ff.. See also Hyginus, Fabulae Preface & 151
  4. ^ According to Hyginus, Fabulae 30, the Hydra "was so poisonous that she killed men with her breath, and if anyone passed by when she was sleeping, he breathed her tracks and died in the greatest torment."
  5. ^ Ogden 2013, p. 29–30.
  6. ISBN 9781350014886
    .
  7. ^ Ogden 2013, p. 27–29.
  8. ^ Ogden 2013, p. 30.
  9. ^ a b Kerenyi (1959), p. 144.
  10. Apollodorus, 2.5.2
    .
  11. ^ Strabo, 8.3.19
  12. ^ Pausanias, 5.5.9
  13. ^ Grimal (1986), p. 219.
  14. ^ Eratosthenes, Catasterismi.
  15. ^ "Ludendorff". London: Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 29 March 2022.

General and cited references

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