Seeing that Heracles was winning the struggle, Hera sent a large crab to distract him. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired by Athena) of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. The details of the struggle are explicit in the Bibliotheca (2.5.2): realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephew Iolaus for help. The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal. 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. He then confronted the Hydra, wielding a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword or his famed club. He fired flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave that it only came out of to terrorize neighboring villages. 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. The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna (Theogony, 313), both of whom were noisome offspring of the earth goddess Gaia.Īfter slaying the Nemean lion, Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles. Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld, and the Hydra was its guardian. 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. The Hydra of Lerna was killed by Heracles as the second of his Twelve Labours. In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra (Greek: Λερναία Ὕδρα) was an ancient nameless chthonic water beast, with singing traits (as evident by its name) that possessed many heads- the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint, and for each head cut off it grew two more - and poisonous breath so virulent even her tracks were deadly.
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