Hydra

When one of its heads was cut off, two could grow in its place. The Hydra was a many-headed serpent with a serpent’s body. Accounts give it nine heads, or as many as fifty or one hundred. One head was immortal. It had poisonous breath, and its scent alone could kill a man. It also devoured cattle and people.

The Hydra was the child of Typhon and Echidna, the half-maiden and half-serpent called the mother of monsters. It lived in the marshes or watery area of Lerna in Argolis, near Argos. The lake of Lerna was regarded by some as an entrance to the Underworld. Hera raised the Hydra as an adversary for Heracles. It belongs chiefly to the myth of Heracles’ second Labour, in which he was ordered to kill it. The term hydra means water-serpent and was originally a general term, although the Lernaean creature came to be treated as the Hydra.