Hydra (1)

The multi-headed offspring of Ekhidna (Echidna) and Typhaon.

The Hydra’s actual appearance was well documented in ancient artwork as a large multi-headed snake; this description agreed with later writers who said that the Hydra had a huge body with eight mortal heads and one immortal head; the creature lurked in the swamps of Lerna, which was a marshy region near ancient Argos in southeastern Greece on the Peloponnesian Peninsula; the Hydra was very hard to kill because each time one of the serpent-like heads was hacked off, two new heads grew to replace it; also, the blood of the Hydra was a deadly poison.

The killing of the Hydra was the Second Labor of Herakles (Heracles); with the help of Iolaos (and with Athene (Athena) watching the battle to lend her protection) Herakles attacked the Hydra; he used either a sword or a sickle to hack at the heads while a giant crab, sent by the vengeful Hera to distract him, snapped at his heels; to prevent the heads from growing back two-fold, Herakles succeeded in cauterizing the squirming necks with a torch as he cut off each head; after the Hydra was dead, Herakles dipped his arrows in the poisonous blood, an act he would regret during his Fourth Labor when the poisoned arrows accidentally killed the Centaurs Kheiron (Chiron) and Pholos.

• Theogony, line 314