Summer Repeats

Yes, it’s summer — re-run season. So here’s a reblog of an early post from October, 2012.

*****

The Legend of Hydra



We often tell tales of dragons as a variety or species with numerous members sharing common attributes. Well, Hydra wasn’t like that. She was an individual with a story of her own.

Hydra was born into a star-studded monster clan. Her parents were Typhon (a hideous deity imprisoned beneath Mt. Aetna by Zeus) and Echidna (a drakaina, or beautiful nymph with the tail of a serpent). Cerberus, Chimera, and Ladon (the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides) were her siblings.

Legend describes Hydra as a gigantic water snake. Her most famous feature, of course, was that she had several heads. Accounts vary wildly, but nine heads is the number most commonly given. If that wasn’t bad enough, when one head was cut off, two more would grow in its place. And that’s not all! (chanelling Billy Mays here) Hydra was so poisonous that if her breath didn’t kill you, a stray drop of her blood would finish the job. Even stepping into her footprint could be fatal.

Like her brothers, Cerberus and Ladon, Hydra was a guardian beast. She lived at Lake Lerna, where an entrance to the Underworld was located. Hydra’s job was to be its guardian. Mostly she stayed at her post, but occasionally she did emerge to terrorize the countryside.

Hydra’s legend is part of a much longer myth cycle, the Twelve Labors of Hercules. I’ll tell her tale in my next blog post.