According toHesiod, the Hydra was the offspring ofTyphon andEchidna.[3] It had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly.[4] The Hydra possessedmany heads, the exact number of which varies according to the source. Later versions of the Hydra story add aregeneration feature to the monster: for every head chopped off, the Hydra would regrow two heads.[5] Heracles required the assistance of his nephewIolaus to cut off all of the monster's heads and burn the neck using a sword and fire.[6]
The oldest extant Hydra narrative appears in Hesiod'sTheogony, while the oldest images of the monster are found on a pair of bronzefibulae dating to c. 700 BC. In both these sources, the main motifs of the Hydra myth are already present: a multi-headed serpent that is slain by Heracles andIolaus. While these fibulae portray a six-headed Hydra, its number of heads was first fixed in writing byAlcaeus (c. 600 BC), who gave it nine heads.Simonides, writing a century later, increased the number to fifty, whileEuripides,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 withEuripides, where the monster grew back a pair of heads for each one severed by Heracles. In theEuthydemus ofPlato, Socrates likens Euthydemus and his brother Dionysidorus to a Hydra of a sophistical nature who grows two arguments for every one refuted.Palaephatus,Ovid, andDiodorus Siculus concur with Euripides, whileServius has the Hydra grow back three heads each time; theSuda 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]
Eurystheus, the king of theTiryns, sent Heracles (or Hercules) to slay the Hydra, whichHera had raised just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp nearLake 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 ofAmymone, a deep cave from which it emerged only to terrorize neighboring villages.[9] He then confronted the Hydra, wielding either a harvestingsickle (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 mythographerApollodorus:[10] realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Heracles called on his nephewIolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired byAthena) of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolauscauterized 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 theconstellationHydra. She then turned the crab into the constellationCancer.
Heracles would later use arrows dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill other foes during his remaining labors, such asStymphalian Birds and the giantGeryon. He later used one to kill the centaurNessus; and Nessus' tainted blood was applied to theTunic of Nessus, by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge. BothStrabo andPausanias 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 assigningThe 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.
Greek and Roman writers related thatHera placed theHydra andcrab asconstellations in the night sky after Heracles slew him.[14] When the sun is in thesign ofCancer (Latin for "The Crab"), the constellation Hydra has its head nearby. In fact, both constellations derived from the earlierBabylonian signs:Bashmu ("The Venomous Snake") andAlluttu ("TheCrayfish").
^According to Hyginus,Fabulae30, 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."
Piccardi, Luigi (2005).The head of the Hydra of Lerna (Greece). Archaeopress, British Archaeological Reports, International Series N° 1337/2005, 179-186.
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