Lernaean Hydra (second feat)

After the first feat Eurystheus sent Hercules kill the Lernaean hydra. It was a monster with the body of a snake and nine dragon heads. Like the Nemean lion, Hydra was spawned by Typhon and Echidna. The hydra lived in a swamp near the city of Lerna and, crawling out of its lair, destroyed whole herds and devastated all the surroundings. Fighting the nine-headed hydra was dangerous because one of its heads was immortal. Hercules and his son Iphicles Set off on a journey to LernaIolaem .

Arriving at the swamp near the city of Lerna, Hercules left Iolaus with a chariot in a nearby grove, and he went to look for hydra. He found her in a cave surrounded by a swamp. Having red-hot his arrows, Hercules began to shoot them one by one into the hydra. The hydra was enraged by the arrows of Hercules. She crawled out, writhing with a body covered with shiny scales, out of the darkness of the cave, rose menacingly on her huge tail and was about to rush at the hero, but her son stepped on Zeus with his foot on the trunk and pinned him to the ground. The hydra wrapped its tail around Hercules' legs and tried to knock him down. Like an unshakable rock, the hero stood and, with swings of a heavy club, knocked down the heads of the hydra one by one. The club whistled in the air like a whirlwind; the heads of the hydra flew off, but the hydra was still alive. Then Hercules noticed that the hydra grows two new ones in place of each knocked-down head. Hydra's help also came. A monstrous crab crawled out of the swamp and dug its pincers into the leg of Hercules. Then the hero called for the help of his friend Iolaus. Iolaus killed a monstrous cancer, lit part of a nearby grove and burned the hydra's necks with burning tree trunks, from which Hercules knocked down their heads with his club. Cancer, who dared to raise a claw on Hercules, was rewarded by the goddess Hera - she placed him in heaven. New heads stopped growing in hydra. Weaker and weaker she resisted the son of Zeus. Finally, the immortal head flew off the hydra. The monstrous hydra was defeated and collapsed dead to the ground.

The victor Hercules buried her immortal head deeply and piled a huge rock on her so that she could not come out into the light again. Then the great hero dissected the hydra's body and plunged his arrows into its poisonous bile. Since then, the wounds from the arrows of Hercules have become incurable. Hercules returned to Tiryns with great triumph. But there was already a new assignment for Eurystheus waiting for him.