Hydna of

Scione Scione or Skione () was an ancient Greek city in Pallene, the westernmost headland of Chalcidice, on the southern coast east of the modern town of Nea Skioni. Scione was founded by settlers from Achaea; the Scionaeans claimed their ancestor ...

(alternately called Hydne or Cyana) (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

480 BC) was an Ancient

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

swimmer and diver given credit for contributing to the destruction of the Persian navy in 480 BC.

Biography

According to Pausanias (''

Description of Greece ''Description of Greece'' () is the only surviving work by the ancient "geographer" or tourist Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias (c. 110 – c. 180). Pausanias' ''Description of Greece'' comprises ten books, each of them dedicated to some ...

'', 10.19.1.), prior to the battle of Salamis. a critical naval battle with the

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

ns, Hydna and her father, Scyllias, volunteered to assist Greek forces by vandalizing the nearby Persian naval fleet. After reaching Greece, Persian king

Xerxes I Xerxes I ( – August 465 BC), commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was a List of monarchs of Persia, Persian ruler who served as the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC. He was ...

had moored his ships off the coast of

Mount Pelion Pelion or Pelium (Modern , ''Pílio''; Ancient Greek/Katharevousa: Πήλιον, ''Pēlion'') is a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in northern Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea. It ...

to wait out a storm prior to the

Battle of Artemisium The Battle of Artemisium or Artemision was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The battle took place simultaneously with the land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off t ...

. Hydna was well known in Greece as a skilled swimmer, having been trained by her father, a professional swim instructor named Scyllias, from a young age. She was known for her ability to swim long distances and dive deep into the ocean. On the night of the attack, father and daughter swam roughly ten miles through rough, choppy waters to reach the ships. They silently swam among the boats, using knives to cut the moorings and dragging away the submerged anchors. Without anchors and moorings to secure the ships, they crashed together in the stormy water. Most of the ships sustained considerable damage and a few sank. The resulting delay allowed the Greek navy more time to prepare in Artemisium and ultimately led to a victory for Greek forces at Salamis. In another chronicle by Herodotus, Scyllias was actually working for the Persians as a diver, recovering a great part of the treasure sunk in the storm before deserting for the Greek side. He supposedly swam submerged from Aphetae to Artemisium, possibly using a primitive snorkel or a stolen boat, and brought the Greeks information about the Persian fleet. This story implies he was a Greek

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...

in the Persian fleet, which he would have sabotaged with Hydna and benefitted professionally from before absconding. In gratitude for the heroism shown by Hydna and her father, the Amphictyons dedicated statues to them at

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...

, the most sacred site of the

world. Pausanias tells us that "beside the statue of

Gorgias Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years ...

is a votive offering of the Amphictyons towards father and daughter". It is thought that Roman emperor Nero plundered her statue and returned with it to Rome in the first century AD.

Cultural depictions

Hydna appears in Elva Sophronia Smith's 1954 novel ''Adventure calls''. Scyllias appears in the 2014 film '' 300: Rise of an Empire'' portrayed by

Callan Mulvey Callan Mulvey (born 23 February 1975) is an Australian actor. He gained widespread recognition for his performances as Mark Moran on the Australian drama '' Underbelly'', Sergeant Brendan 'Josh' Joshua in '' Rush'', and as Bogdan Drazic in the ...

, though Hydna does not, being replaced by a male son named Calisto ( Jack O'Connell).

References

{{authority control Greek female divers Greek female swimmers Women in ancient Greek warfare Ancient Chalcidicians 5th-century BC Greek people 5th-century BC Greek women Greek people of the Greco-Persian Wars