Emperor Nero tries to find the bottom of the lake

c. 67 Tradition

Beside the springs lay the Alcyonian lake, said to have no bottom; through it, the Argives believed, Dionysus went down to the underworld to fetch his mother Semele. Pausanias tells that the emperor Nero had ropes many stades long, weighted with lead, let down into it and still found no bottom. Nero toured Greece in 66–67 AD, so the attempt, if it happened, belongs to those years.

Where

Lake and marsh of Lerna

Who

Nero

Threads

Ancient Lerna, Water and mills

Certainty

Tradition myth, legend or oral memory

Sources

• Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.37.5

Also in this period

1. 6000 BC – 3200 BC

   First farmers settle by the springs of Lerna

   In the Neolithic, more than 6,000 years ago, farmers settled on a low rise beside the springs, just south of today's village. Each generation built on the ruins of the last, so the settlement mound of Lerna slowly grew.…

   ProvenAncient LernaWater and mills

2. 2500 BC – 2200 BC

   The House of the Tiles

   At the centre of Early Bronze Age Lerna stood a large two-storey building roofed with baked clay tiles and stone slabs. Rows of seal impressions found inside show that goods were stored and checked here, so it probably…

   ProvenAncient Lerna

3. c. 1250 BC

   Lerna is abandoned

   Lerna stayed inhabited into the Middle Bronze Age. In the Mycenaean period the hill was used mainly as a cemetery and lived on only now and then, and around 1250 BC it was abandoned for good.

   ProvenAncient Lerna

4. c. 700 BC

   Hesiod tells of the Hydra of Lerna

   Around 700 BC the poet Hesiod is the first to write about the Hydra, the many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna, killed by Heracles. In the later version of the story two heads grew back for every one he…

   TraditionAncient LernaWater and mills