Lerna

In classical Greece, Lerna[1] (Greek: Λέρνα or Λέρνη) was a region of springs and a former lake located in the municipality of the same name, near the east coast of the Peloponnesus, south of Argos.[2] 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.[4]Lerna was one of the entrances to the Underworld, and the ancient Lernaean Mysteries, sacred to Demeter, were celebrated there, along with a festival called the Lernaea, which was also held in her honor.[5]At Lerna, Plutarch knew (Isis and Osiris), Dionysus was summoned as "Bugenes", "son of the Bull" with a strange archaic trumpet called a salpinx, while a lamb was cast into the waters as an offering for the "Keeper of the Gate."[12] The burning of the House of Tiles brought the Third Period at Lerna to a decisive close; a low round tumulus marked its undisturbed, apparently sacrosanct site.A great profusion of unlined pits (bothroi) was characteristic of this phase: eventually they became filled with waste matter, bones, potsherds, even whole pots.Modern geological techniques such as core drilling have identified the site of the vanished sacred Lake Lerna, which was a freshwater lagoon, separated by barrier dunes from the Aegean.