Cerberus, also known as kerberos

These sources and notes support the main Cerberus Profile Page

Notes:

1. Cerberus was the offspring of Echidna, the monstrous half-woman, half-serpent, and Typhoeus or Typhon, a fearsome giant often described as the most terrible of all monsters(Hesiod, Hyginus). This lineage linked Cerberus to other fearsome creatures such as the Hydra and Chimera. Cerberus was described as a powerful freightening monster with fifty-heads and serpent's heads around its neck and a dreadful dragon's tail that has brazen sounding bark and eats raw flesh(Hesiod). Instead of fifty, Cerberus had three heads or throats or mouths(Apollodorus, Apuleius, Homer, Hyginus, Ovid, Virgil).

2. Cerberus' main task was to guard the gates of the underworld as a faithful hound of god Hades, preventing anyone entering but mostly for any soul to escape this forsaken place. With many heads, frightening bark and monstrous appearance, he was the perfect gatekeeper that no one could overcome(Hesiod) and would also bark at the souls so loud that the whole world of the dead could hear it(Homer, Ovid). It symbolized a boundary between the living and the dead.

3. Cerberus held back Coeus, when the titan wanted to escape the rivers and gloom of the underwold in his madness to take a revenge on Zeus and take back the rulership of heavens and earth(Valerius Flaccus).

4. Aeneas, while entering the underworld, encountered Cerberus at the gates. Aeneas then planted honey in a drugged meal for the gatekeeper which made it drowsy and let the hero pass through the gates(Virgil). Psyche have also distracted the hound with barley-cakes to pass the gates while searching for Persephone in one of the tasks set by Aphrodite(Apuelius).

5. Another one, who encountered Cerberus at the gates, was Orpheus while searching for his wife in the underworld.Cerberus was put in a wondered state by the song of Oprheus lyre which made the hound forgot to bark and repel the hero from entering the realms of Hades(Virgil).

6. The most famous of encounters with the gatekeeper was the one with Heracles, where the hero was given an impossible task to overcome. The hero was tasked to bring Cerberus from the underworld and present it to Eurystheus. When Heracles reached Hades he asked the god from permission take the hound. Hades agreed on the condition of mastering it without using weapons. The hero then found Cerberus at the gates of Acheron and flung his arms around the head of the monster and, despite being bitten by its tail, continued his grip until the hound stopped resisting(Apollodorus).

APOLLODORUS, LIBRARY, Book 2, translated by J. G. FRAZER

[2.5.12] A twelfth labour imposed on Hercules was to bring Cerberus from Hades. Now this Cerberus had three heads of dogs, the tail of a dragon, and on his back the heads of all sorts of snakes. When Hercules was about to depart to fetch him, he went to Eumolpus at Eleusis, wishing to be initiated...When Hercules asked Pluto for Cerberus, Pluto ordered him to take the animal provided he mastered him without the use of the weapons which he carried. Hercules found him at the gates of Acheron, and, cased in his cuirass and covered by the lion's skin, he flung his arms round the head of the brute, and though the dragon in its tail bit him, he never relaxed his grip and pressure till it yielded

APULEIUS, THE GOLDEN ASS, book 6, 6-20 The tale of Cupid and Psyche: the underworld, translated by A. S. KLINE

All these and more are traps laid for you by Venus, to make you let go of one of those barley-cakes. And don’t think losing a barley-cake is of little consequence, if you lose either cake you’ll not see daylight again. For you’ll arrive at the monstrous dog, with triple heads of enormous size, a huge and fearsome creature with thunderous jaws, who barks enough to frighten the dead but in vain; he can do them no harm. He keeps constant guard at the threshold of Proserpine’s dark halls, defending the insubstantial palace of Dis. One barley-cake thrown as a sop will hold him, and you can get by easily, and enter Proserpine’s presence.

HESIOD, THEOGONY, translated by H. G. EVELYN-WHITE

[306] And again she [Echidna] bore the unspeakable, the terrible Cerberus, who eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades, fifty-headed, and powerful, without pity. He guards the gates of the house of Hades, a frightful monster whom no one could overcome.

[312] ...and on his back, he had the dreadful dragon’s tail, and many a serpent’s head sprouted upon his neck.

HOMER, THE ODYSSEY, book 11, translated by IAN JOHNSTON

[540] A monstrous dog, Cerberus, the guard of the dead, with three throats, He barks at us, and the sound fills the world of the dead.

HYGINUS, FABULAE, 150-199, translated by MARY GRANT

Fable [151] - From Typhon the giant and Echidna were born Gorgon, the three-headed dog Cerberus

OVID, METAMORPHOSES, Book 10, translated by BROOKES MORE

[21] Cerberus barked with all his triple mouths, and made the shadowy realm of Pluto echo.

[40] While he sang all his heart said to the sound of his sweet lyre, the bloodless ghosts themselves were weeping...Struck quite senseless by this double death of his dear wife, he was as fixed from motion as the frightened one who saw the triple necks of Cerberus, that dog whose middle neck was chained. The sight filled him with terror he had no escape from, until petrified to stone

VALERIUS FLACCUS, ARGONAUTICA, book 3, translated by J. H. MOZELY

[224] As when Coeus in the lowest pit bursts the adamantine bonds and trailing Jove’s fettering chains invokes Saturn and Tityus, and in his madness conceives a hope of scaling heaven, yet though he repass the rivers and the gloom the hound of the Furies and the sprawling Hydra’s crest repel him.

VIRGIL, AENEID, Book 6, translated by H. R. FAIRCLOUGH

[417] These realms huge Cerberus makes ring with his triple-throated baying, his monstrous bulk crouching in a cavern opposite. To him, seeing the snakes now bristling on his necks, the seer flung a morsel drowsy with honey and drugged meal. He, opening his triple throat in ravenous hunger, catches it when thrown and, with monstrous frame relaxed, sinks to earth and stretches his bulk over all the den. The warder buried in sleep, Aeneas wins the entrance, and swiftly leaves the bank of that stream whence none return.

VIRGIL, GEORGICS, Book 4, translated by H. R. FAIRCLOUGH

[471] Stirred by his song, up from the lowest realms of Erebeus came the unsubstantial shades, the phantoms of those who lie in darkness, as many as the myriads of birds that shelter among the leaves when evening or a wintry shower drives them from the hills – women and men, and figures of great-souled heroes, their life now done, boys and girls unwed, and sons placed on the pyre before their fathers’ eyes. But round them are the black ooze and unsightly reeds of Cocytus, the unlovely mere enchaining them with its sluggish water, and Styx holding them fast within this ninefold circles. Still more: the very house of Death and deepest abysses of Hell were spellbound, and the Furies with livid snakes entwined in their hair; Cerberus stood agape and his triple jaws forgot to bark; the wind subsided, and Ixion’s wheel came to a stop.