Heracles and the Hydra of Lerna (feat DIRTYBIOLOGY) - Picture It #6

A "Picture It" with a special guest, which as you've noticed is pointless, because it's me that's done all the work. He's only good at making faces.
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Help us caption and translate this video!

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Hey! Welcome to That's Another Story.

Here we are for a new "Picture It",

where I show you the people and stories

which are often represented in art.

Hi.

We'll also be gatecrashed by Léo

- from Dirtybiology.
- You invited me.

- No. No.
- Yes. Yes. Yes.

- There'll be Leo making nasty comments.
- No.

♪ (scratch DJ hip hop beat) ♪

"Picture It" #6: the painting 'Heracles
and the Hydra of Lerna'

So, what's the painting today?

It's a painting which was painted

around 1475 by an Italian artist called

Antonio del Pollaiolo, which represents

Heracles struggling with the
Hydra of Lerna.

Heracles?

Yes, that's his Greek name you know,

the Romans call him Hercules.

Yeah like the Disney cartoon.

Yes. No. Yeah, nah.

In fact they very much adapted the

character of Hercules, who is actually

extremely brutish, a kind of

guy that as a teenager killed his music

music teacher just because he got fed up,

or when he was a baby strangled snakes.

Chilled, relaxed...

He even killed his wife and his kids too.

Cool! What fun. Not that PC.

You understand why Disney rewrote the
thing a bit.

But why not? Mythology is a thing that

rewrites itself over time, and always has
been.

That's why we always have ten thousand

different version of the same myth.

It was done in the ancient world as well.

So who was the real Heracles?

Heracles is one of the numerous

illegitimate sons of Zeus, seeing as Zeus,

slept around all over the place.

And he did it with the mortal Amphitryon,

who he'd tricked by appearing as her
husband.

And so Hera, Zeus's wife, always very
jealous,

decided to make Heracles suffer as
revenge.

And anyway, Heracles takes his name from
Hera,

Heracles meaning, 'Glory of Hera', because

it was thanks to her that he had lots of

adventures and he became a hero.

But what did Hera actually do?

I'm not gonna cover the whole myth,

because it's long, but since his
childhood,

for example, she sent the famous snakes

into his crib, which Heracles calmly

killed with his bare hands, sweet little
baby,

and the worst thing that she did to him

was to make him go mad and kill his

children and his wife Megara,

according to the version of the story.

Yeah, that's honourable.

Yeah, tell that to Disney.

The filmmakers must've had a big
brainstorm.

Err... what're we doing for the bit where

he kills his entire family?

Um, I dunno, shall we make a song?

So, to pay back her crime, Heracles went

to work for the god Eurystheus who gave

him twelve trials which are theoretically

impossible to achieve.

And one of them was to go and kill the

Hydra of Lerna, in Argolis in the
Peloponnese.

A hydra?

Yeah, so a hydra is a mythological beast,

the description of it varies a bit between

versions, as always, and the version that

the artist chose for this painting is the

one like a dragon with lots of heads and

poisonous breath.

How do you do the hydra?

So the thing is, when you cut the hydra's

heads off, they resprout, and there's one

which is immortal.

Yeah, right...

No, it's mythology Léo...

Mythology, whatever.

- It's mythology.
- Yeah, whatever, mythology.

SO, Heracles, who's struggling a bit to

cut off the hydra's head that keep
resprouting,

asks for help from his nephew Iolaus,

who uses flaming timber -

Of course.

- who uses flaming timber to cauterise

the hydra's stumps, so the heads stop
resprouting.

And for the immortal head, he buries it

under a big pile of stones to neutralise
it.

But we can't see Iolaus there on... the
thing.

No, basically the artist preferred to just

represent Heracles, maybe to highlight

his grandeur and bring him forward,

you can see that he is completely

out of proportion with the landscape and
even the hydra.

- No flaming timber either?
- Nah, the artist decided to use only

attributes characteristic of Heracles,

namely the club, hey big boy,

and the lion skin which he wears as a
cape.

And as a dick-hider.

Yes. And as a dick-hider.

There's a knot on his knob.

And so this lion skin, it comes from the

Nemean Lion, which was a mythological lion

somewhat legendary which lived in the same

region, in Argolis in the Peleponnese,

and which terrorised the locals.

Heracles' first trial just before the

Hydra was to go and kill the Nemean lion.

I know there are no lions in Ancient
Greece,

- but it's just mythology so -
- Yes there are.

- There are.
- Lions?

Yes. Yes.

(English) Oh my god!

- Yes, yes, sorry.
- Wut. Wut.

Anyway I made an awesome video on the

subject, if you wanna see click here, and

it's a video that I made with a very cool
lady.

Oh yeah? This person right here.

Ok, but it makes sense in fact that

Heracles kills a lion even if it's

mythology etc., that makes sense.

And in fact this lionskin, it even became

his distinctive symbol, along with the
club.

It's how we recognise him.

Yeah. except when he's killing the lion.

- Yes.
- Because if he's not already killed

- the lion he can't wear its skin yet.
- Yes Léo.

So now you know that if you see someone

with a lionskin and a club, it'll be
Heracles,

and if he's fighting a kind of snake with

loads of weird heads, well he's fighting

the Hydra of Lerna. Bust that one out in
conversation.

But he's also in many other kinds of
scene.

Like the eleventh trial.

Yes, and many other different things which

we will definitely talk about some time.

It's the end of the video,

if you liked it please share

it to make it known to other people.

And if by some great miracle you still

don't know about Léo's channel, you can

check it out, it's called Dirtybiology,

you can click the link here, it's

super awesome. It's about biology so about

- dirty living things.
- Like dicks!

- There you go. It's massive -
- Like dicks!

- Shush.
- Like dicks!

Shush.

So I'll see you very soon, for another
story!

SUBSCRIBE!

Perfect.

- Mythology's rubbish.
- Humour-al glands.

In ancient times there were tonnes of

- lions in Greece.
- Yes? No.

- No way.
- Yes!

Lions? It's not true. I don't believe you.

- Yes.
- It's wrong. You're lying.

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