Hydra
The many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna in Greek myth, which grew two heads for every one cut off and was killed by Heracles as one of his labours.
Meaning
The Hydra of Lerna is the serpent Heracles fought as one of his labours. Hesiod says Hera raised her “being angry beyond measure with the mighty Heracles”, and that Heracles killed her with the help of his nephew Iolaus “through the plans of Athene”. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes her as a gigantic water snake from the marshes of Lerna near Argos with nine heads, one of them immortal, though the number varies; John Vinycomb noted in 1906 that ancient gems usually give her seven or nine. In English a “hydra-headed” problem is one that grows as it is fought.
Origin and history
Britannica gives the fight as later writers told it. Whenever a head was cut off, two more grew from the wound, so Iolaus seared each stump as Heracles cut it. Heracles cut off the immortal head last and buried it under a heavy rock, then dipped his arrows in the Hydra’s poisonous blood, which, in Sophocles’ telling, later caused his own death.
Hesiod places her in a family of monsters, in the same passage as Cerberus, the fifty-headed hound of Hades, and the Chimera.
The hydra in heraldry
Vinycomb found the hydra in British heraldry as a dragon with seven heads, and rare. He wrote that the story was “usually referred to in illustration of a difficulty which goes on increasing as it is combated”, the sense the word still has.
The freshwater hydra
Britannica notes that zoologists gave the name to a genus of small freshwater animals with a ring of tentacles at one end of a tube-shaped body, a nod to the many heads.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeHarpyIn Greek myth, the snatchers: storm winds that carried people off, later pictured as foul birds with women’s faces who stole the food of the blind king Phineus.
- The same shape in Buddhist symbolsRight-turning conchA white conch shell spiralling to the right, one of the eight auspicious symbols. Its sound is the Buddha's teaching, carrying in every direction.
See also
Chimera, Minotaur, Centaur, Siren, Pegasus, Griffin.
Sources
- Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Theogony, lines 306–332
- Hydra (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Hydra”, online edition (archived copy), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Hydra, pp. 96–97
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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