In classical Greece,
Lerna was a region of springs and a former lake near the east coast of the
Peloponnesus, south of
Argos. Its site near the village
Mili at the
Argolic Gulf is most famous as the lair of the
Lernaean Hydra, the
chthonic many-headed water snake, a creature of great antiquity when
Heracles killed it, as the second of his labors. The strong
Karstic springs remained; the lake, diminished to a silt lagoon by the 19th century, has vanished.