Hydra
HY-druh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe many-headed water snake of Lerna. Hesiod says Hera reared it out of anger against Heracles specifically, and that he killed it with Iolaus and the counsels of Athena.
The heads that grow back two for one, and the burning of the stumps to stop them, come down through later tellings rather than Hesiod, who is brief. What Hesiod does give is the motive: the monster was raised for one man.
Its blood poisons the arrows Heracles carries afterwards, so the thing he kills keeps killing on his behalf for the rest of his life.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 313-318
- Apollod. 2.5.2
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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