Lernaean Hydra

Nine-headed serpent haunting the swamps of Lerna in the Argolid, whose breath alone was said to kill. For every head Heracles crushed, two more grew in its place; only when his nephew Iolaus fired the neighbouring grove and seared each stump with the burning branches could the regeneration be stopped. One of the heads was immortal — Heracles cut it off, buried it still hissing, and rolled a great stone over it at the roadside near Lerna. From the Hydra's venom he made the arrow-poison that later killed the centaur Nessus, and through Nessus's bloodied shirt, Heracles himself.

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