Lernaean Hydra just to slay Heracles. Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He shot flaming arrows into the Hydra's lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave from which it emerged only to terrorize neighboring villages. He then confronted the Hydra, wielding either a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings), a sword, or his famed club. The chthonic creature's reaction to this decapitation was botanical: two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but
Ino (Greek mythology) Ino (Greek mythology) In Greek mythology Ino (; Ancient Greek: Ἰνώ, ) was a mortal queen of Boeotia, who after her death and transfiguration was worshiped as a goddess under her epithet Leucothea, the "white goddess." Alcman called her "Queen of the Sea" (), which, if not hyperbole, would make her a doublet of Amphitrite. Ino was the second wife of the Minyan king Athamas, mother of Learches and Melicertes and stepmother of Phrixus and Helle. She was the second daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia and one of the three sisters of Semele, the mortal woman of the house of