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 (help·info)) was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic 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.^[1] The Hydra of Lerna was killed by Heracles 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]

[edit] The Second Labour of 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 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 Hercules 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; 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 Heracles 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 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.

[edit] Constellation

Mythographers relate that the Lernaean Hydra and the crab were put into the sky after Hercules 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.

[edit] Popular culture

In the pre-teen novel The Sea of Monsters, the main characters battle the Hydra somewhere near Chesapeake Bay.

Hydra the Revenge is a Bolliger and Mabillard floorless roller coaster at Dorney Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania with a Lernaean Hydra theme. The name of the ride pays tribute to the "Hercules" wooden roller coaster that once stood on the same spot. The theme itself is the Hydra coming back to life and seeking revenge over Hercules.^[6] It also is the only currently operating coaster to have an inversion before the main lift hill.

The Ray Harryhausen film Jason and the Argonauts features both Hercules and a hydra (though, contrary to Greek myth, the hydra is slain by Jason, rather than Hercules, as the latter has already left the Argonaut's expedition in this re-imagined version of the story).

In 1997, Disney released an animated movie named Hercules. In the film Hercules fights the Hydra, however this hydra starts with a single head, and as the fight progresses, the monster gains dozens of heads, until all that can be seen is dozens and dozens of heads, each trying to eat Hercules. He defeats the monster by causing a rock slide, crushing the Hydra.

The 1971 TV Movie Ellery Queen - Don't Look Behind You starring Peter Lawford features a serial killer dubbed 'The Hydra' by the media, although the killer strangles his victims. To fit in with the legend the title sequence features an animation of a multi-headed reptile.

The Hydra has featured prominently in videogames of a fantasy setting - one example is the Playstation 2 game God of War, where the protagonist Kratos battles a monsterously enormous Hydra out at sea as the game's opening scene (and first boss encounter). He defeats the creature by impaling its three heads on the ship's masts.

In the final book in the Beyond the Spiderwick Cronichles series, the protagonist faces the Wyrm King who is a Hydra with multiple heads.

The Fourheads in the Viva Pinata game series is based on the Hydra. It has the appearance of a three-headed snake with another head on the end of its tail, referencing some of the Hydra's more serpentine depictions.

[edit] Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lernaean Hydra

[edit] 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. 

[edit] External links

• Statue of the Hydra battling Hercules at the Louvre