🐉 The Hydra
The many-headed water serpent of Lerna that grew two heads for every one cut off
Also known as Hydra, Lernaean Hydra
📺 "Tonight's guest has more heads than our camera crew, and losing one only improves its mood. If you brought a sword, you brought the wrong thing."
💀 Facts
- It lived in the swamp of Lerna, near Argos, and was raised by Hera to fight Heracles
- Killing it was the second of the twelve labours of Heracles
- Apollodorus gives it nine heads, eight mortal and the middle one immortal
- Every head that Heracles smashed grew back as two
- His nephew Iolaus burned each neck with a torch to stop the heads growing back
- Heracles buried the immortal head under a rock and dipped his arrows in the creature's venom
- Eurystheus refused to count the labour because Heracles had help
📜 Legend
The Hydra lived in the swamp at Lerna, south of Argos, where the springs were said to be bottomless, and was raised by the goddess Hera out of spite for Heracles. Hesiod, around 700 BCE, makes it a child of Typhon and Echidna and tells how Heracles and his nephew Iolaus destroyed it, but gives no number of heads; the poet Alcaeus settled on nine a century later, and others went as high as fifty. Killing it was the second of the twelve labours. Apollodorus tells the version everyone knows: Heracles forced the Hydra out of its lair with burning arrows, grabbed it, and found that every time he smashed a head with his club two grew in its place, while Hera sent an enormous crab to nip at his feet. He crushed the crab, which Hera placed among the stars as Cancer, and called Iolaus, who burned each neck stump with a torch as his uncle lopped the head off. The middle head was immortal, so Heracles buried it under a heavy rock by the road and dipped his arrows in the creature's venomous gall. Those arrows later killed the centaur Nessus, whose poisoned blood would in turn kill Heracles himself. Eurystheus refused to count the labour because Iolaus had helped. Linnaeus named the tiny freshwater polyp Hydra in 1758 because it regrows from pieces, the largest of the 88 constellations is the Hydra, and a moon of Pluto discovered in 2005 was named after it too.
🎭 Myth vs Movie
True or false? Make your guess, then click a card (or press r) for the verdict.
Two of the Hydra's heads grew back for every one that was cut off.
✔ TRUE
That is what Apollodorus says, and Ovid has Hercules remember the monster growing stronger with every wound. Hesiod, the oldest source, does not mention regrowing heads at all.
Heracles beat the Hydra single-handed.
✘ FALSE
His nephew Iolaus cauterised each neck with a burning torch so that the heads could not grow back, which is why Eurystheus refused to count the labour.
The Hydra's venom eventually killed Heracles.
✔ TRUE
He dipped his arrows in its gall and later shot the centaur Nessus with one. Nessus's poisoned blood, smeared on a shirt, burned Heracles to death years afterwards.
Hera sent a crab to help the Hydra.
✔ TRUE
The crab nipped at Heracles' feet until he crushed it. Hera put it in the sky as the constellation Cancer.
The Hydra had nine heads in every ancient source.
✘ FALSE
Hesiod gives no number, Alcaeus nine, and later poets fifty or more. Nine, with one immortal, is Apollodorus's count and the one that stuck.
🕯️ Quotes
“Now the hydra had a huge body, with nine heads, eight mortal, but the middle one immortal.”
“Nor could he effect anything by smashing its heads with his club, for as fast as one head was smashed there grew up two.”
Lines come only from public-domain texts.
🃏 Stat Card
⚡ Powers
- Two new heads for every one lost
- One head that cannot die at all
- Venomous breath and blood
- A goddess on its side, and a crab
🧄 Weaknesses
- A burning torch
- A nephew called Iolaus
- A very heavy rock
- Teamwork, which Eurystheus called cheating
Stats power the Monster Mash: terminal-of-terror mash hydra
🎞️ Legacy
- Ray Harryhausen's seven-headed Hydra guarding the Golden Fleece in Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
- Disney's Hercules (1997), where the Hydra is the young hero's first big fight
- HYDRA, the Marvel Comics organisation whose motto is 'cut off one head, two more shall take its place'
- Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), with a Hydra in a doughnut shop
- The constellation Hydra, the largest of the 88, and Pluto's moon Hydra, found in 2005
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