The twelfth and last of a famous set of labours was to drag it into daylight
Heracles was allowed to take it only if he used no weapons
Myth · Greek
Cerberus
Greek mythology — monster, hound of Hades
The many-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld, letting the dead in and never letting them out. Usually three-headed, with a serpent for a tail, it is the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and so a brother of the Hydra and the Chimera. Only a handful of visitors got past it: one hero by main force, one musician by playing to it, and Aeneas by way of a drugged honey-cake.
How to spot them
- ▸Three heads, a mane of snakes and a serpent's tail, chained at a gate
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Typhon and Echidna', 'the twelfth labour', 'a sop', 'aconite'
- ▸Everyone gets in; nobody gets out
- ▸Hesiod gives it fifty heads, later writers three
Stories & episodes
Lulled to sleep by a Thracian musician on his way to fetch back his wife
Orpheus charmed it with the lyre, as he charmed Hades himself
Given a drugged honey-cake by a prophetess so a Trojan could pass
The Sibyl of Cumae throwing the sop, in Aeneid 6
Hesiod gives it fifty heads; everyone since has settled on three
The Theogony's brazen-voiced, raw-flesh-eating hound of Hades
Its slobber, falling on the ground, was said to sprout a deadly poison
Aconite, or wolfsbane, according to Ovid
A brother of the Hydra and the Chimera
All children of Typhon and Echidna, the parents of most Greek monsters
Dante sets it flaying the gluttons in the third circle
Inferno VI, where Virgil quiets it with a handful of earth
Quick-fire facts
- •Offspring of Typhon and Echidna; siblings include the Lernaean Hydra, the Chimera and Orthrus
- •Hesiod's Theogony gives it fifty heads; the familiar three come from later art and literature
- •The phrase 'a sop to Cerberus' means a bribe to quiet a troublesome guardian
- •Aconite (wolfsbane, monkshood) was said in Ovid to grow from its foam
- •In the Aeneid, the Sibyl throws it a honeyed, drugged cake so Aeneas can pass
- •Dante's Inferno puts it in the third circle, tormenting the gluttonous
- •The three-headed dog Fluffy in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is put to sleep by music, exactly as Orpheus did
- •The Romans kept the name unchanged; it derives from Greek Kerberos, of uncertain etymology
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Cerberus
- Hesiod — Theogony Lines 310–312: the fifty-headed hound of Hades and its parentage