Lernaean Hydra- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster"The Many-Headed Serpent"

The Swamp at Lerna

The Hydra lurked in the marshes near the ancient city of Lerna in the Argolid, where her very presence poisoned the land and water. The marshes were already sinister: Pausanias records a bottomless lake there, said to be one of the entrances to the Underworld, and sacred rites called the Lernaean Mysteries were performed by the lake, their content too holy for Pausanias to record. The Hydra made the place utterly deadly. She had nine heads, and one was immortal, beyond the reach of any weapon. Her breath alone could kill anyone who inhaled it, and her blood was toxic to the touch. No mortal dared approach the swamp.

Her father was Typhon, the serpentine giant who had challenged Zeus for the cosmos. Her mother was Echidna, the half-woman, half-serpent who dwelt in a cave beneath the earth and bore the monsters that heroes would face. Cerberus and the Chimera were among her siblings. Hesiod says Hera herself raised the Hydra and nurtured the creature as a weapon against Heracles. She had already sent serpents to strangle the boy in his cradle. They failed. The Hydra was the next weapon she forged.

The Second Labor

After Heracles, driven mad by Hera, killed his own wife Megara and their children, the oracle at Delphi commanded him to serve King Eurystheus of Tiryns. Eurystheus devised the Twelve Labors, each designed to kill the hero. After the Nemean Lion fell in the first labor, Eurystheus sent Heracles to destroy the Hydra.

Heracles rode to Lerna with his nephew and charioteer Iolaus, son of Iphicles. On the advice of Athena, the hero found the Hydra's lair near a spring called Amymone, beneath a plane tree. He wrapped cloth around his face against the poisonous air and shot flaming arrows into the lair to force the monster out.

The Hydra emerged. Her heads wove and struck. Heracles swung his great club at the serpent necks, but with each head he cut off, two more grew in its place. The Hydra wound herself around his legs and held fast. The more he fought, the stronger the monster became. Hera sent a giant crab from the swamp to clamp onto his foot while he struggled. He crushed it beneath his heel, and Hera later placed it among the stars as the constellation Cancer.

It was Iolaus who found the answer. He set fire to a piece of the nearby wood and brought the burning brands. While Heracles severed each head, his nephew cauterized the stump with a torch before new heads could sprout. The fire sealed each wound before new flesh could form. Head by head they worked through the creature, Heracles cutting, Iolaus burning, until only the immortal head remained. Heracles severed it and buried it beneath a massive boulder on the road from Lerna to Elaeus, where it would hiss and rage for eternity but could harm no one.

In the Hydra's venomous blood, Heracles dipped his arrows. Any wound from these arrows was incurable: the venom burned through flesh until the victim died in agony. The arrows would serve him through many of his remaining labors, but they would also bring catastrophe.

Eurystheus refused to count the labor. Heracles had not completed the task alone: Iolaus's help with the cauterization meant it was a joint effort. This was why Heracles ultimately completed twelve labors rather than the original ten.

The Poison's Reach

The Hydra's venom proved more destructive than the living monster. The poisoned arrows killed the centaurs who attacked at Pholus's cave and the giant Geryon. But they also caused deaths that haunted Heracles.

Chiron, the wise centaur who lived on Mount Pelion and had taught Achilles and Asclepius, was struck by a stray arrow when fleeing centaurs, driven by Heracles' own arrows, sought refuge in his cave. The wound burned ceaselessly in the centaur's immortal flesh, a torment worse than death because death could not end it. Chiron's skill in healing could not counteract the Hydra's venom, and he endured eternal agony until he surrendered his immortality to free Prometheus from his crag.

When the centaur Nessus tried to assault Heracles's wife Deianira at the river Euenus, Heracles shot him from the far bank with a poisoned arrow. Dying, Nessus told Deianira that his blood would serve as a love charm: if she ever feared she was losing her husband, she should soak a garment in it. She kept the blood, hidden away, for years.

When Heracles took the princess Iole after sacking Oechalia, Deianira feared she had been replaced. She soaked a robe in the centaur's blood and sent it to Heracles. When he put it on, the Hydra's venom, preserved in Nessus's blood, burned into his flesh with inextinguishable fire. He built his own funeral pyre on Mount Oeta and gave his bow and poisoned arrows to Philoctetes in exchange for lighting the flames. Those arrows would later prove essential at Troy. But it was the Hydra's poison that killed the son of Zeus.