Even a great hero such as Heracles, however, needed help from his nephew, Iolaus, to defeat this dragon, as whenever Heracles clubbed one of the Hydra’s heads, a further two would spring up in its place. To atone for this, Apollo tasked Heracles with performing twelve arduous tasks for Eurystheos, the Mycenaean king.Īmong these labors was the killing of the Hydra of Lerna, as recorded in Apollodorus of Athens’ Library of Greek Mythology. Their union enraged Zeus’ wife, Hera, who temporarily afflicted Heracles with madness, during which time he killed his wife and their children. Heracles (or, in Roman myth, Hercules) was the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene. Thus to defeat a dragon is to assert one’s heroic – and even near-godlike – status, as, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, even Zeus himself fought the Typhon, a monster with one hundred serpentine heads which, in true dragon-fashion, breathed fire. From countless myths, however, these serpents are clearly large in scale and possess supernatural powers. In Ancient Greek, the word for “dragon” can also signify a snake or serpent. Ancient Greco-Roman Dragons A colored ink drawing after an early 5th century BCE Attic cup depicting Jason being expelled from the mouth of the dragon of Colchis, via the Wellcome Collection
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