Hydra
The Lernaean hydra in Frazer’s translation
The many-headed creature of Lerna whose smashed heads grow back in pairs, overcome by Heracles with Iolaus’s help.
Quick answer
In the Library, the Lernaean Hydra is a huge creature with nine heads: eight mortal and an immortal middle head. Two grow in place of each smashed head. Iolaus burns their roots to stop the regrowth, and Heracles buries the immortal head beneath a heavy rock.[1]
Quick facts
| Record type | Individual creature in Greek mythography |
|---|---|
| Source | Apollodorus, Library 2.5.2, translated by Frazer (1921) |
| Source realm | Lerna in the Greek mythic world |
| Local setting | Swamp of Lerna; den on a hill beside the springs of Amymone |
| Form | Huge body; nine heads, with the middle one immortal |
| Defining ability | Two heads replace each smashed head until the roots are burned |
| Opponents | Heracles and Iolaus |
| Outcome | Overcome in the second labour; Eurystheus refuses to count the assisted victory |
Account details in this table follow Library 2.5.2.[1]
What the source says
Eurystheus’s second command sends Heracles against the Hydra, which leaves Lerna’s swamp to ravage the plain and its cattle. Iolaus drives him there in a chariot. Heracles finds the den beside Amymone’s springs and forces the creature out with burning arrows. It coils around one of his feet; striking its heads with his club makes the danger multiply, because two replace each head he smashes.[1]
A large crab helps the Hydra by biting Heracles’s foot. He kills the crab and calls Iolaus to his aid. Iolaus sets fire to part of the neighbouring wood and uses burning brands on the roots of the heads, preventing new growth. Heracles cuts off the immortal head and buries it under a heavy rock beside the road through Lerna to Elaeus.[1]
Heracles then opens the body and dips his arrows in its gall. Eurystheus disallows the labour because Iolaus helped: in this passage the king is counting an original set of ten tasks.[1]
Description and abilities
The text specifies a huge body that can coil around a foot, but gives no measurements, colour, wings, or number of legs. It distinguishes the mortal heads from the immortal middle one. Their regrowth is stopped by burning the roots; the immortal head is removed and buried, not described as killed.[1]
Frazer uses “gall” for the substance in which Heracles dips his arrows. This profile preserves that wording rather than substituting blood. The passage does not describe poisonous breath or fire-breathing: the burning missiles and brands belong to the attackers.[1]
Source realm: Lerna
The narrative locates the Hydra in Lerna’s swamp and its den on a hill beside Amymone’s springs. Its raids extend into the surrounding plain. The road to Elaeus marks the burial place of the immortal head. These are locations within the selected account, not a general habitat for a class of fantasy creatures.[1]
This individual is catalogued with creatures because this passage supplies a particular opponent and encounter, without defining a dragon category.
Role in the labour
Read as a narrative, the encounter turns strength into an insufficient answer: blows increase the number of heads, while Iolaus’s intervention makes victory possible. That same help becomes Eurystheus’s reason to deny credit. This is a reading of the episode’s structure, rather than a claim that the Hydra universally symbolises a particular evil.[1]
Book and reference
- 1The Library
Apollodorus (conventionally Pseudo-Apollodorus); with an English translation by Sir James George Frazer. Volume I, Loeb Classical Library 121. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1921. Book 2, chapter 5, section 2 (2.5.2). Public-domain translation; Theoi transcription.
Read Book 2; locate [2.5.2] ↗Edition and authorship note ↗. The ancient compiler’s identity and exact date are uncertain; the work’s traditional attribution does not establish authorship by the second-century BCE scholar Apollodorus.