Mention of the Volcanic Eruption That Destroyed The Original
Isles of Crete -
Lake Lerna and Argos' Legend of The Swampy Waters Fleeing and Drying Up:
Poseidon grants water
Before these bloody events, Poseidon and Hera had a dispute for the patronage of Argos, and a tribunal of three RIVER GODS—Inachus (father of Io), Cephisus, and Asterion 2—decided that the territory would belong to Hera and not to Poseidon. Disappointed with this ruling, the god made their waters disappear, so that their streams being dry during the summer, they would never provide any water except after rain. In addition, Poseidon, disappointed with the decision of the RIVER GODS, inundated many of the region's districts because. Lerna was, however, excepted; for it was here that Amymone 1 (one of the DANAIDS) yielded to Poseidon on condition that she might have water, and the god, being in love with her, revealed to her the springs at Lerna. This happened when Danaus 1 sent his daughters to draw water. Amymone 1, apparently combining her search for water with hunting, threw a dart at a deer, hitting a sleeping Satyr, who then attempted to rape her. It was then that Poseidon appeared, and having driven the Satyr away, lay with the girl, revealing to her the springs at Lerna. It is told that the god hurled his trident at the Satyr and that it became fixed in a rock. Then he asked Amymone 1 what she was doing in the wilderness, and as she replied that her father had sent her to get water, the god bid her to draw the trident from the rock. And when she did so, three streams of water flowed from the earth (one for each of the trident's prongs). That was the gift that Poseidon bestowed on the girl in exchange for her love—more than the Satyr could ever have offered her (if anything). And from their union, Nauplius 1 (the father of Palamedes) was born, as some say. But others deny this, arguing that Nauplius 1, being still alive after the end of the Trojan War, could by no means be the son of the Danaid, who lived many generations before him:
"After Temenium comes Nauplia, the naval station of the Argives: and the name is derived from the fact that the place is accessible to ships. And it is on the basis of this name, it is said, that the myth of Nauplius and his sons has been fabricated by the more recent writers of myth, for Homer would not have failed to mention these, if Palamedes had displayed such wisdom and sagacity, and if he was unjustly and treacherously murdered, and if Nauplius wrought destruction to so many men at Cape Caphereus. But in addition to its fabulous character the genealogy of Nauplius is also wholly incorrect in respect to the times involved; for, granting that he was the son of Poseidon, how could a man who was still alive at the time of the Trojan war have been the son of Amymone?" (Strabo, Geography 8.6.2).
The mythographer Apollodorus was well aware of this, since he writes:
"Amymone had a son Nauplius by Poseidon. This Nauplius lived to a great age …" (Apollodorus, Library "Epitome" 2.1.5).
But Apollodorus does not argue on the issue of the age of Nauplius 1, and few could in fact guess for how long the son of a god might live. Zeus, for example, granted life for three generations to his son Sarpedon 1 … And concerning naval stations, Lerna apparently was one, since we read that Heracles 1's son Tlepolemus 1, the leader of the Rhodians against Troy (who, by the way, was killed in the war by the same Sarpedon 1), sailed to Rhodes from Lerna when he emigrated to the island. Coincidentally (but sailing in the opposite direction), Danaus 1 had landed in a place near Lerna, after having touched Rhodes, on his way from Egypt (Apd.2.1.4; Pau.2.38.4).
The Hydra of Lerna
Swampy Lerna gained even more renown when Heracles 1 performed there his second Labour, which consisted in destroying the Hydra, a beast with nine heads, eight of which were mortal, the middle one being immortal; or else with one hundred heads of serpent, or even countless heads (the scepticism of later authors proclaimed that the Hydra had only one head). Some say that the monster was so poisonous that she could kill a man with her breath. The Hydra of Lerna, offspring of Typhon and Echidna, was nourished by Hera, who was then angry at Heracles 1. Having discovered the Hydra on a hill beside the Amymonian springs, Heracles 1 attacked the monster with fiery shafts to force it to come forth. Then he commanded his helper Iolaus 1 to prevent new heads from sprouting by searing with a burning brand the part that had been severed. In that way the flow of the Hydra's blood was checked in its necks, and after cutting off all the mortal heads, Heracles 1 chopped off the immortal one as well. This one he buried beside the road that leads from Lerna to Elaeus, putting a heavy rock on it. Heracles 1 then slit up the body of the Hydra and dipped his arrows in its gall; for this reason the wounds produced by his arrows became incurable, as that of Chiron, that of the Centaur Pholus 1, that of Geryon, and that of Paris (who was killed by Philoctetes, the man who inherited Heracles 1's bow and arrows). And indeed the slayer of the Hydra himself was, years later, destroyed by its venom, through the love-charm that the Centaur Nessus 2 gave to Heracles 1's wife Deianira 1. (See also HERACLES 1'S LABOURS.)
Mention of Lake Lerna's Hydreosa Gates to the Caldera <<…The-2Rites-of-Kratos...>> -
In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra (Ancient Greek: Λερναία Ὕδρα) was an ancient serpent-like chthonic water beast, with reptilian traits (as its name evinces), that possessed many heads — the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint, and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath and blood so virulent even its tracks were deadly.[1] The Hydra of Lerna was killed by Hercules as the second of his Twelve Labours. Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid, though archaeology has borne out the myth that the sacred site was older even than the Mycenaean city of Argos since Lerna was the site of the myth of the Danaids. Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld, and the Hydra was its guardian.[2]
The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna (Theogony, 313), both of whom were noisome offspring of the earth goddess Gaia.[3]
The Second Labour of Hercules
After slaying the Nemean lion, Eurystheus sent Hercules to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Hercules. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Hercules covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He fired flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave that it only came out of to terrorize neighboring villages.[4] He then confronted the Hydra, wielding a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword or his famed club. Ruck and Staples (1994: 170) have pointed out that the chthonic creature's reaction was botanical: upon cutting off each of its heads he found that two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but the hero. The weakness of the Hydra was that it was invulnerable only if it retained at least one head.
The details of the struggle are explicit in the Bibliotheca (2.5.2): realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way, Hercules called on his nephew Iolaus for help. His nephew then came upon the idea (possibly inspired by Athena) of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Hercules cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps. Seeing that Hercules was winning the struggle, Hera sent a large crab to distract him. He crushed it under his mighty foot. The Hydra's one immortal head was cut off with a golden sword given to him by Athena. Hercules placed the head – still alive and writhing – under a great rock on the sacred way between Lerna and Elaius (Kerenyi 1959:144), and dipped his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood, and so his second task was complete. The alternative version of this myth is that after cutting off one head he then dipped his sword in it and used its venom to burn each head so it couldn't grow back. Hera, upset that Hercules slew the beast she raised to kill him, placed it in the dark blue vault of the sky as the Constellation Hydra. She then turned the crab into the Constellation Cancer.
Hercules would later use arrows dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood to kill other foes during his remaining Labours, such as Stymphalian Birds and the giant Geryon. He later used one to kill the centaur Nessus; and Nessus's tainted blood was applied to the Tunic of Nessus, by which the centaur had his posthumous revenge. Both Strabo and Pausanias report that the stench of the river Anigrus in Elis, making all the fish of the river inedible, was reputed to be due to the Hydra's poison, washed from the arrows Hercules used on the centaur.[5]
When Eurystheus, the agent of ancient Hera who was assigning The Twelve Labors to Hercules, found out that it was Hercules' nephew Iolaus who had handed him the firebrand, he declared that the labor had not been completed alone and as a result did not count towards the 10 Labours set for him. The mythic element is an equivocating attempt to resolve the submerged conflict between an ancient ten Labours and a more recent twelve.
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