Lernaean Hydra

The Hydra of Lerna is a monster from Greek mythology, daughter of Typhon, the most terrible of the giants, and of Echidna, the mother of monstrous beasts, according to the genealogy collected in Hesiod's Theogony. It thus belongs to the chaotic lineage of creatures (along with Cerberus, the Chimera or the Nemean lion) that the Olympian order had to subdue. It inhabited the waters and mudflats of the Lerna swamp, in Argolis, near the city of Argos, a place that tradition also associated with an entrance to the underworld. From its muddy lairs, the Hydra ravaged the region: it devoured livestock and travelers and poisoned the waters and air with its breath, so that its mere breath was enough to kill. Its presence made Lerna a cursed and feared place, an embodiment of the danger that lurks in the wetlands.

The Hydra is described as a gigantic aquatic serpent endowed with multiple heads, whose number varies according to the sources (the most widespread tradition attributes nine to it, although some authors speak of more). Its most fearsome trait was its power of regeneration: for each head that was cut off, two new ones sprouted, so that attacking it head-on made it stronger. One of its heads, moreover, was immortal and could not be destroyed. Added to this was its deadly poison: its blood and its breath were poisonous, and a single wound was enough to cause death. With its serpentine body it could seize and drag its victims into the mud. These attributes made the Hydra an almost invincible adversary, a symbol of evil that multiplies when it is fought without method.

Defeating the Hydra was the second of the twelve labors that Eurystheus imposed on Heracles. The hero went to the swamp of Lerna accompanied by his nephew Iolaus. He soon realized that cutting off the heads was useless, since they grew back multiplied; then he devised, with Iolaus, the solution: as soon as Heracles cut off a head, Iolaus cauterized the neck with a burning torch, preventing it from growing back. Thus they finished off all the mortal heads, and the only immortal one was buried under a heavy rock at the edge of the road. Heracles then dipped his arrows in the poisonous bile of the Hydra, thereby turning them into deadly weapons that he would use in the future (and which, in time, would cause his own death). Eurystheus, however, did not want to count this labor among the twelve because Heracles had received help from Iolaus.

The myth of the Hydra has endured as a symbol of evils that multiply when attacked superficially or without strategy: each apparently solved problem engenders two others. Its combat with Heracles was one of the favorite themes of Greek art, represented in ceramics from archaic times, and passed into Latin literature (Ovid, Seneca) and later iconography. From its name derives that of the genus Hydra, the small freshwater polyps famous for their regenerative capacity, and the expression «a hydra of a thousand heads» continues to be used to designate an evil difficult to eradicate. The Hydra thus survives in contemporary culture, from comics to video games, as an image of the enemy that is reborn and of the challenge that requires, more than strength, intelligence to be overcome.