96K views · 2.6K reactions | 2,000-year-old bronze fountain depicting...

The Hydra was a monster from Greek mythology with many snake-like heads. If you cut off one head, two more would grow back. It lived in the Lernaean marshes near Argos. Heracles, a Greek hero, had to defeat the Hydra as one of his twelve challenges. With help from his nephew Iolaus, they found a way to stop new heads from growing by burning the stumps after cutting them off. After beating the Hydra, Heracles used its poisonous blood to make his arrows deadly. #hydra #mythology #snakehead #reelsv

Hercules and the Hydra (1634) was painted by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664). The Lernaean Hydra was a serpentine water monster from Greek mythology, and if you cut off one of his heads, three new ones would grow back. This painting shows the second of twelve labors of Hercules, where he elicits the help of his nephew to kill the Hydra by scorching each stump after decapitating a head, such that the new heads could not grow back. The serpent was actually created by the godde