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For Irene always favoured her brother's incurable whimsicality as a resource against the powers of Erebus and dark Night, and humoured any approach to extravagance, to disperse the cloud that had gathered. This one pleased him. "How shall we put it?... somehow like this.... By-the-by, do you know how to spell Lernaean?..." He paused abruptly, and seemed to listen. "Sh sh a minute!
In the second month, when the sun enters the sign Virgo, the long-extended constellation of the Hydra sets the stars of which, like so many heads, rise one after another; and, therefore, in his second labor, Hercules destroys the Lernaean hydra with its nine heads. In like manner the legend is explained throughout.
With regard to it "religion" especially are we left in the dark. What this dreadful thing is towards which "science" is always playing the part of Herakles towards the Lernaean Hydra, we are left to gather from the course of the narrative. Yet, in a book with any valid claim to clearsightedness, one would think such a point as this ought to receive very explicit preliminary treatment.
Thus, among the Greeks, the most refined people that cultivated hero-worship, Hercules was the sun, and the mythologic fable of his destroying with his arrows the many-headed hydra of the Lernaean marshes was but an allegory to denote the dissipation of paludal malaria by the purifying rays of the orb of day.
It is said that Cineas, while he was managing this affair, made it his business carefully to inspect the manners of the Romans, and to understand their methods of government, and having conversed with their noblest citizens, he afterwards told Pyrrhus, among other things, that the senate seemed to him an assembly of kings, and as for the people, he feared lest it might prove that they were fighting with a Lernaean hydra, for the consul had already raised twice as large an army as the former, and there were many times over the same number of Romans able to bear arms.
He desired him to produce a collection equal to that in the temple of Delphos, mentioned in the "Ion" of Euripides; where Hercules and his companion Iolaus, are represented in the act of killing the Lernaean hydra with golden sickles, kruseais harpais, where Bellerophon appears on his winged steed, vanquishing the fire-breathing chimera, tan puripneousan; and the war of the giants is described.
He destroyed the Stymphalides, the Lernaean hydra, Cacus, Antheus, the Centaurs, and what not; I am no clericus, those that are such tell me so. In imitation of that noble by-blow, let's destroy and root out these wicked Furred Law-cats, that are a kind of ravenous devils; thus we shall remove all manner of tyranny out of the land.
But at that time, stricken by Heracles, he lay fallen by the trunk of the apple-tree; only the tip of his tail was still writhing; but from his head down his dark spine he lay lifeless; and where the arrows had left in his blood the bitter gall of the Lernaean hydra, flies withered and died over the festering wounds And close at hand the Hesperides, their white arms flung over their golden heads, lamented shrilly; and the heroes drew near suddenly; but the maidens, at their quick approach, at once became dust and earth where they stood.
With like originality, it substitutes for the somewhat commonplace Lernaean hydra all the local dragons of our national legends the gargoyle of Rouen, the gra-ouilli of Metz, the chair sallée of Troyes, the drée of Montlhéry, the tarasque of Tarascon monsters of forms so diverse, whose outlandish names are an additional attribute.
I can say to her, darling, that if I were offered my eyesight back, by some irritating fairy godmother that kind of thing in exchange for the Gwen that is mine, I would not accept her boon upon the terms. I should, on the contrary, wish I were the Lernaean Hydra, that I might give the balance of seven pairs of eyes rather than ..." "Rather than lose Gwen." Irene spoke, because he had hesitated.
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