Lerna

Lerna was a marshy district on the Gulf of Argolis in the Peloponnese, a short distance south of Argos. It is the place where Heracles killed the Lernaean Hydra as his second labour, where the daughters of Danaus found their springs, and where the Argives held mysteries in honour of Demeter and told of a way down to the Underworld (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.2; Pausanias 2.36.6–2.37.6).

The Place

Pausanias says that the sea at Lerna is forty stades from Argos. On the road down from Argos one crosses the Erasinus and the Cheimarrus, and the district is then crossed by streams and springs, among them the source of the Amymone. A sacred grove, mostly of plane trees, stretches from Mount Pontinus down to the sea, between the river Pontinus and the river Amymone; it holds images of Demeter Prosymne and Dionysus (Pausanias 2.36.6–2.37.1). Strabo mentions the river Lerna, which flows through the district before Temenium and has the same name as the lake in which the story of the Hydra is set; he also names a spring Amymone at Lerna, and says that because of the purifications carried out in the lake a proverb arose, “a Lerna of ills” (Strabo 8.6.2, 8.6.8). Pausanias adds that in summer the streams of the Argolid dry up, except those at Lerna (Pausanias 2.15.5).

The Lernaean Hydra

Hesiod makes the Hydra of Lerna the third child of Echidna, and says that the goddess Hera raised it because she was furiously angry with Heracles; Heracles destroyed it with the help of Iolaus and by the counsel of Athena (Hesiod, Theogony 313–318).

It was the second labour that Eurystheus set Heracles. According to Apollodorus, the Hydra was bred in the swamp of Lerna and used to come out into the plain to ravage the cattle and the countryside. It had a huge body with nine heads, eight of them mortal and the middle one immortal. Heracles drove to Lerna in a chariot with Iolaus, found the Hydra on a hill by the springs of the Amymone, where its den was, and forced it out with burning arrows. It coiled around one of his feet, and as fast as he smashed one head with his club, two grew in its place; a huge crab also came to help the Hydra and bit his foot. Heracles killed the crab and called on Iolaus, who burned the roots of the heads with brands from the neighbouring wood so that they could not sprout again. Heracles then cut off the immortal head, buried it beside the road that leads through Lerna to Elaeus, and laid a heavy rock on it. He split open the body and dipped his arrows in its gall. Eurystheus refused to count the labour among the ten, because Heracles had not overcome the Hydra alone but with the help of Iolaus (Library 2.5.2).

The number of heads varies. Apollodorus says nine; Diodorus Siculus says that a hundred necks, each with a serpent’s head, grew from its single body (Diodorus 4.11). Pausanias, who saw the plane tree at the source of the Amymone beneath which the Hydra was said to have grown, believed that it was an unusually large water-snake with one head and with poison so deadly that Heracles tipped his arrows with its gall. He says that the many heads were added by the poet Peisander of Camirus to make the beast more frightful (Pausanias 2.37.4). Virgil places the Beast of Lerna among the monsters at the entrance to the Underworld (Aeneid 6.287–288).

Amymone and the Springs

When Danaus came to Argos with his daughters, the land had no water, because Poseidon had dried up even the springs in his anger at Inachus. The daughters of Danaus went looking for water. One of them, Amymone, threw a dart at a deer and struck a sleeping satyr, who woke and tried to force her; Poseidon appeared, the satyr fled, and Amymone lay with Poseidon, who then showed her the springs at Lerna (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4). Pausanias notes that one of the two rivers bounding the grove at Lerna was named Amymone after her (Pausanias 2.37.1), and that the daughters of Danaus dedicated a stone image of Aphrodite by the sea there (Pausanias 2.37.2).

Lerna is also where the sons of Aegyptus died. After the Danaids killed their bridegrooms on the wedding night, they buried the heads in Lerna and paid funeral honours to the bodies before the city, according to Apollodorus (Library 2.1.5); Pausanias reports the Argive version, in which the young men were murdered at Lerna and their bodies lay there, while the heads were buried on the way up to the citadel of Argos (Pausanias 2.24.2).

Demeter, Dionysus and the Underworld

At Lerna the Argives celebrated mysteries in honour of Lernaean Demeter, which they said had been founded by Philammon (Pausanias 2.36.7, 2.37.2). Near the river Cheimarrus, Pausanias saw a circle of stones where, according to the Argives, Pluto went down to his underground kingdom after carrying off Core, the daughter of Demeter (Pausanias 2.36.7).

The Alcyonian Lake at Lerna was also said to be a way to Hades: the Argives told that Dionysus went down through it to bring Semele up, with Palymnus showing him the way. Pausanias describes the lake as having no known bottom, calm on the surface but dragging down any swimmer who tried to cross it, and says that nocturnal rites in honour of Dionysus were performed there every year (Pausanias 2.37.5–6).