Second Essay on the Labors of Hercules..the Adult Meaning

The ancient (1st-2nd Century CE) writer Apollodorus tells the story of Hercules' second labor, against the multi-headed Lernaean Hydra, in Library 2.5.2. The story also gets some treatment in Pausanias, Strabo, Hesiod and other ancient sources. In keeping with my emphasis of drawing out "lessons for life" from Hercules' labors, I mention about five or six more lessons here. This second labor that King Eurystheus sent him on was the task of killing this multi-cephalic snake-like creature, which lived in a swamp near Lerna and came out only long enough to terrorize inhabitants and kill cattle in surrounding areas.

1. The first lesson is that our challenges, after the successful fight (i.e., against the Nemean Lion), continue to be of a strange and very threatening nature. The Hydra, said to be a sibling of the Nemean Lion and variously depicted in Medieval bestiaries and Renaissance art, emitted venomous breath as well as had dangerous serpentine legs. But it is not as if the challenge comes to Hercules; he had to go after it and "smoke it out," so to speak, of its own lair or, in this case, its paludal palace. Sometimes our own challenges will come to us; more often we need to go and face them, in the place where they reside. We fight on their turf, not ours, and the fight is fierce. The mythological tradition doesn't agree on how many heads this creature possessed; Apollodorus says nine, but more ancient sources say that he had more heads than the vase-painters could paint.

2. Second, after Hercules draws the Hydra away from his swampy residence, he finds his club, which killed other previous foes, apparently useful but, ultimately, useless. Why? Because every time he would kill one of the heads by whacking it with the club, two more would grow in its place. Every "problem solver" knows that the quick solving of significant life problems is only a mirage; two replace the one you "solved." Then, to top it all, while Hercules is trying to figure out how to deal with the multiplying heads, Hera (his foe) sends a crab to nip at his leg which had been caught by one of the slimy heads. The problems that face us may not confront us face-to-face and threaten to kill us; we may be nickled and dimed to death; we may almost bleed to death by the nagging and bothersome effort of something nipping at our feet.

3. Hercules can't quite see the way out of his dilemma. Whereas in the case of the Nemean Lion he figured out on his own that his club and arrows were useless, here he needs the help of his nephew, Iolaus, who suggests the cauterizing of the lopped off or whacked heads of the Hydra. Sometimes we can solve our problems on our own; just as often, however, we need the counsel of a young and seemingly inexperienced friend/relative. That counsel is really "out of the box," for who would have thought that fire, rather than arrows, clubs or bare hands would get him through this labor?

4. Fourth, when Hercules thinks he has solved his problem, by slicing and burning all the Hydra heads, so that all one has is a singed mass of monster-flesh, he realizes he has a new problem or, better said, a problem that he wasn't aware of previously--one of the heads is immortal. Some problems in life, some poisonous-smelling problems, are just not going to go away. They will last as long as eternity. But Hercules decides to lop off the immortal head, bury it by the side of the road and place a big rock atop the grave. Like the nuclear waste from Hanford or various Nevada test sites, which never, or almost never, will decompose, so the immortal head of the Hydra will always be "there," even if buried beneath the earth.

5. Hercules, however, even tries to "redeem" the dead carcass of the Hydra. That is, his "victory" over the second foe isn't simply in the lopping off and burning of the heads. He dips his arrows into the gall of the sliced-up body of the Hydra, and with this posion he will be able to kill his future foes. But this effort at "redeeming" the gall of the Hydra is really a lesson in what not to do. Why? Because later in his life, he will end up shooting the Centaur Nessus, who has tried to rape his wife, with one of the poisoned arrows. Before he dies, Nessus gives instructions to Deianeira, Hercules' wife, to dip Hercules' shirt into his wound, for he says that the gall/blood mixture will forever be a sort of prophylactic against a wandering spouse. Dutifully, Deianeira complies. Later, she gives Hercules the shirt, he puts it on, and suffers tremendous agony because the shirt has been poisoned. So, I suppose that one of the lessons of Hercules' victory over the Lernaean Hydra is to leave the carcass behind; don't try to get something for nothing or think that there is something of value in the enemy. Don't "spoil" the enemy; just get out of there.

6. Finally, we learn that his labor isn't "accepted" or "accredited" by King Eurystheus because Hercules had used the aid of Iolaus rather than fighting it out on his own. But, as we have seen, he wouldn't have been able to emerge victorious had he found on his own. He needed help. This reinforces the lesson, taught us in the Nemean Lion tale, that even though you might have delivered the world, so to speak, from an awful calamity, you have in fact not won over the person for whom you are doing the work. Ingratitude greets your attempts, and it seems as if the rules have changed during the course of your exploits. There is nothing you can do but to shut up and get to the third labor.

Whereas the first labor taught us that sometimes you can take the carcass (or at least the skin) of the defeated foe as a token or prize of your encounter, this labor instructs that sometimes you do best just to leave all traces of your effort behind you. Bury the immortal part, slice up the mortal parts, and then high-tail it out of there....

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