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Lerna is a city and fountain in a swampy region
south of Argos.
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Waters and mysteries
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Lerna was known for the quality of its water:
"The dinner
being slow in coming, a discussion arose concerning
water—which was the sweetest? Some praised the
water of Lerna, others, again, the water of Peirene
..." [Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistae
4.156e]
... which was, they say, the gift that
Poseidon gave to the
region when he met Amymone 1, one of the
DANAIDS. That is why it
was also said from old:
"The daughters
of Danaus rendered
Argos, which was waterless,
Argos the well watered ..."
And the geographer Strabo adds:
"And Lake
Lerna, the scene of the story of the Hydra, lies in
Argeia and the Mycenaean territory; and on account
of the cleansings that take place in it there arose
a proverb, 'A Lerna of ills.' Now writers agree
that the county has plenty of water, and that,
although the city itself lies in a waterless
district, it has an abundance of wells. These wells
they ascribe to the daughters of Danaus, believing
that they discovered them ... but they add that
four of the wells not only were designated as
sacred but are especially revered, thus introducing
the false notion that there is a lack of water
where there is an abundance of it." [Strabo,
Geography
8.6.8]
And concerning the cleansings and sacred
ceremonies that took place at Lerna, it has also
been said that
"On Mount
Crathis [northern
Arcadia, bordering
Achaea] is a sanctuary of
Artemis Pyronia (Fire-goddess), and in
more ancient days the Argives used to bring from
this goddess fire for their Lernaean
ceremonies." [Pausanias,
Description
of Greece 8.15.8]
The mysteries of Lerna were established, they
say, by Philammon [Pau.2.37.1], son of
Apollo (or perhaps of
Hephaestus), and
father of Thamyris 1, the minstrel who lost his
eyes in a contest with the
MUSES.
According to some accounts, it was near Lerna
that Hades descended to
the Underworld when
he carried off
Persephone. Thus in
Lerna the mysteries in honour of Lernaean
Demeter (mother of
Persephone) were
celebrated [Pau.2.36.6].
And also yearly nocturnal rites in honour of
Dionysus 2 were
performed at Lerna, the contents of which are not
divulged by the traveller Pausanias, who always
abides, in these matters, by his usual reservation.
For also Dionysus 2
descended to the
Underworld in this
place (the Alcyonian Lake) when he went down in
search of his mother
Semele. Concerning the
depth of this lake's perilous waters, says
Pausanias:
"There is no
limit to the depth of the Alcyonian Lake, and I
know of nobody who by any contrivance has been able
to reach the bottom of it since not even Nero, who
had ropes made several stades long and fastened
them together, tying lead to them, and omitting
nothing that might help his experiment, was able to
discover any limit to its depth. This, too, I
heard. The water of the lake is, to all appearance,
calm and quiet but, although it is such to look at,
every swimmer who ventures to cross it is dragged
down, sucked into the depths, and swept away."
[Pausanias,
Description
of Greece 2.37.4]
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Io
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Yet, some have regarded Lerna as a fertile
district even before that time. For they have
represented the dreams that guided
Io as saying:
"O damsel
greatly blessed of fortune, why linger in your
maidenhood so long when it is within your power to
win a union of the highest?
Zeus is inflamed by passion's dart for
you and is eager to unite with you in love. Do not,
my child, spurn the bed of
Zeus, but go forth to Lerna's meadow
land of pastures deep and to your father's flocks
and where his cattle feed, so that the eye of
Zeus may find respite from its
longing." [Aeschylus,
Prometheus
Bound 650]
Having obeyed the dreams,
Io was embraced by
Zeus, and then turned into
a cow and forced to wander over the whole world:
"... with
horns ... upon my forehead ... stung by a
sharp-fanged gadfly I rushed with frantic bounds to
Cerchnea's sweet stream and Lerna's spring."
[Io to
Prometheus 1.
Aeschylus,
Prometheus
Bound 675]
This story was later disbelieved, and the
disappearance of Io was
attributed to the perfidy of Phoenician merchants,
who kidnapped her and brought her to Egypt:
"On the fifth
or sixth day after their arrival, when their wares
were almost all sold, many women came to the shore
and among them especially the daughter of the king,
whose name was Io (according to Persians and Greeks
alike), the daughter of Inachus. As these stood
about the stern of the ship bargaining for the
wares they liked, the Phoenicians incited one
another to set upon them. Most of the women
escaped: Io and others were seized and thrown
into the ship, which then sailed away for Egypt."
[Herodotus,
History
1.1.3]
Apparently, no evidence was ever produced to
prove that charge against the Phoenicians. But
since the tale of Io turning
into a cow and being loved by a god came to be
regarded as unlikely, the Phoenicians were, with or
without evidence, thoroughly cursed:
"My curse,
first, upon the Carnite [Phoenician] sailor hounds! the merchant wolves
who carried off from Lerna the ox-eyed girl
[Io] ..."
[Cassandra. Lycophron,
Alexandra 1291]
Accordingly, later abductions were regarded as
retaliations for the first. Thus when the Europeans
carried off the Phoenician princess
Europa, they believed
that Asia and Europe were then even. However, that
was taken as yet one loop in the chain of affronts
that Asia and Europe inflicted upon each other.
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Danaus 1
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In Egypt, Io gave birth to
Epaphus 1, son of Zeus.
Epaphus 1 fathered Libya, who having consorted with
Poseidon, gave birth,
among others, to Belus 1. Belus 1, who inherited
the kingdom of Egypt, married Anchinoe (daughter of
Nilus), and had by her many children, among which
Danaus 1 and Aegyptus 1.
Danaus 1 felt threatened by Aegyptus 1 and his
50 sons, and decided that he and his 50 daughters
would leave Egypt and emigrate to
Argos, the country of
their ancestor Io. After
having touched Rhodes,
Danaus 1 arrived to Argos,
then ruled by Gelanor (whom Danaus 1 overthrew), or
perhaps by Pelasgus 1.
The sons of Aegyptus 1, however, came after them
and demanded to be wedded to the daughters of
Danaus 1 (the DANAIDS).
Danaus 1, being threatened, consented to the
marriage, and allotted his daughters among them.
But at the same time, he instructed the girls to
kill the bridegrooms on their wedding night, giving
them daggers for that purpose.
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The heads of the bridegrooms
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Thus all the DANAIDS
except one killed their bridegrooms on their
wedding night, burying their heads in Lerna.
Now, some may think that the many heads of the
Lernaean Hydra—a monster that appeared
afterwards—could be the reincarnated heads of
the murdered bridegrooms, a curse from the past.
However, others have affirmed that the bodies of
the sons of Aegyptus 1 were buried by the
DANAIDS in Lerna, and
not the heads, which were buried in Larisa, the
citadel of Argos.
It is said that the girls were purified of their
crime by Athena and
Hermes at the command of
Zeus. Yet, it is also told
that the DANAIDS are
still being punished in the
Underworld for their
crime.
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Poseidon grants
water
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Before these bloody events,
Poseidon and
Hera had a dispute for the
patronage of Argos, and a
tribunal of three RIVER
GODS —Inachus (father of
Io), Cephisus, and Asterion
2—decided that the territory would belong to
Hera and not to
Poseidon. Disappointed
with this judgement, the god made their waters
disappear, so that their streams being dry during
the summer, they would never provide any water
except after rain. In addition,
Poseidon also inundated
many of the region's districts because of the
decision of the RIVER
GODS.
Lerna is, however, excepted; for it was here
that Amymone 1 (one of the
DANAIDS) yielded to
Poseidon on condition
that she might have water, and the god, being in
love with her, revealed to her the springs at
Lerna. This happened when Danaus 1 sent his
daughters to draw water. Amymone 1, who apparently
combined her search with hunting, threw a dart at a
deer, hitting a sleeping Satyr, who then attempted
to rape her. It was then that
Poseidon appeared, and
having driven the Satyr away, lay with the girl,
revealing to her the springs at Lerna.
It is told that the god hurled his trident at
the Satyr and that it became fixed in a rock. Then
he asked Amymone 1 what she was doing in the
wilderness, and as she replied that her father had
sent her to get water, the god bid her to draw the
trident from the rock. And when she did so, three
streams of water flowed from the earth (one for
each of the trident's prongs).
That was the gift that
Poseidon bestowed on
the girl in exchange for her love. More than the
Satyr could ever have offered her (if anything).
And from their union, Nauplius 1 (the father of
Palamedes) was born,
as some say; but others deny it, arguing that
Nauplius 1, being still alive after the end of the
Trojan War, could by
no means be the son of the Danaid, who lived many
generations before him:
"After
Temenium comes Nauplia, the naval station of the
Argives: and the name is derived from the fact that
the place is accessible to ships. And it is on the
basis of this name, it is said, that the myth of
Nauplius and his sons has been fabricated by the
more recent writers of myth, for Homer would not
have failed to mention these, if
Palamedes had displayed such wisdom and
sagacity, and if he was unjustly and treacherously
murdered, and if Nauplius wrought destruction to so
many men at Cape Caphereus. But in addition to its
fabulous character the genealogy of Nauplius is
also wholly incorrect in respect to the times
involved; for, granting that he was the son of
Poseidon, how could a man who was still
alive at the time of the
Trojan war have been the son of Amymone?"
[Strabo,
Geography
8.6.2]
The mythographer Apollodorus was aware of this,
since he writes:
"Amymone had a
son Nauplius by
Poseidon. This Nauplius lived to a great
age ..." [Apollodorus,
Library
"Epitome" 2.1.5]
But Apollodorus does not argue on the issue of
the age of Nauplius 1, and few could in fact say
how long the son of a god might live.
Zeus, for example, granted
his son Sarpedon 1 life for three generations ...
And concerning naval stations, Lerna apparently was
one, since we read that
Heracles 1's son
Tlepolemus 1, the leader of the Rhodians against
Troy (who, by the way, was
killed in the war by the same Sarpedon 1), sailed
to Rhodes from Lerna when
he emigrated to the island. Coincidentally (but
sailing in the opposite direction), Danaus 1 had
landed in a place near Lerna, after having touched
Rhodes, on his way from
Egypt [Apd.2.1.4; Pau.2.38.4]
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The Hydra of Lerna
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Swampy Lerna gained even more renown when
Heracles 1 performed
there his second Labour, which consisted in
destroying the Hydra, a beast with nine heads,
eight of which were mortal, the middle one being
immortal; or else with one hundred heads of
serpent, or even countless heads (the scepticism of
later authors proclaimed that the Hydra had only
one head). Some say that the monster was so
poisonous that she could kill a man with her
breath. The Hydra of Lerna, offspring of Typhon and
Echidna, was nourished by
Hera, who was then angry at
Heracles 1.
Having discovered the Hydra on a hill beside the
Amymonian springs,
Heracles 1 attacked
the monster with fiery shafts to force it to come
forth. Then he commanded his helper Iolaus 1 to
prevent new heads from sprouting by searing with a
burning brand the part that had been severed. In
that way the flow of the Hydra's blood was checked
in its necks, and after cutting off all the mortal
heads, Heracles 1
chopped off the immortal one as well. This one he
buried beside the road that leads from Lerna to
Elaeus, putting a heavy rock on it.
Heracles 1 then
slit up the body of the Hydra and dipped his arrows
in its gall; for this reason the wounds produced by
his arrows became incurable, as that of
Chiron, that of the
Centaur Pholus 1, that of Geryon, and that of
Paris (who was killed by
Philoctetes, the man
who inherited Heracles
1's bow). And indeed the slayer of the Hydra
himself was, years later, destroyed by its venom,
through the love-charm that the Centaur Nessus 2
gave to Heracles 1's
wife Deianira 1.
[See also
HERACLES 1'S
LABOURS]
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