Hydra Monster Of Greek Mythology
Greek mythology is very interesting, and everyone who has read the book on Trojan War would readily agree. There were several monsters in Greek mythology that were killed by various Greek heroes. Hydra was one such monster.
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Hydra was a monster with several heads, and she terrorized all the visitors who came close to the lake of Lerna in Greece. She lived inside that lake and ruled it. Killing the Hydra was a very challenging task as each time one of the heads was cut off, another two would take its place. She would only keep her head out of the water occasionally and killing her would mean cutting of her neck. However, she had many heads so she had many necks. Cutting off would mean cutting out all the heads and by that time Hydra will probably kill the person. Also, the heads kept growing back even if someone would cut her neck.
So, Hydra was this problem which was becoming bigger as time went by. Even today, in normal language, Hydra is referred to a problem that is getting bigger.
Hercules, who killed his own family, was looking for salvation and he prayed to Apollo, the Sun God. The Sun God gave him twelve tasks to complete for achieving salvation. One of them was killing the monster called Hydra. It was Hercules who figured out that each time Hydra's head was cut off, the neck had to be cauterized before the new heads emerged. Hercules approached Hydra with a cloth covering his nose because she had a horrible breath. He took a blazing torch and while he cut of the monsters neck he also cauterized the neck with the torch. After Hercules killed the monster, he buried the monster and placed a huge rock over the site so that the monster could not emerge from the ground in case it decided to return to life.
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