Raised To Be A Problem

Hesiod says Hera raised her, nursing an implacable grudge against Heracles — a deliberate weapon, not an accident of nature. She is the Hydra of Lerna, and the marsh matters: Lerna was a real place with deep springs that the ancients associated with an entrance to the underworld, and a creature seated on a water source is a creature seated on something a settlement cannot abandon. Later sources add the detail that makes her famous — that for every head struck off, two grow back — and one head that cannot be killed at all. The problem is not that she is strong. It is that the obvious tool makes her worse.